Microsoft Word 05 descriptions doc

preliminary norms
,” which concern 
the selection of the kind of text and the mode of translation (direct/indirect, etc.), and 
“
operational norms
,” which would cover all the decisions made in the act of 
translating. However, as our “verse into prose” example shows, norms also have 
different social and epistemological dimensions. They concern what translators think 
they are supposed to do, what clients think translators ought to do, what text-users think 
a translation should be like, and what kind of translations are considered reprehensible 
or especially laudable within the system. 
Chesterman
(1993) organizes these various 
aspects by distinguishing between “
professional norms
,” which would cover 
everything related to the translation process, from “
expectancy norms
,” which are what 
people expect of the translation product. If translators in a given society usually add 
numerous explanatory footnotes, that might be a professional norm. If readers are 
frustrated when such notes do not appear, or if the notes are in an unusual place 
(perhaps at the beginning of the text rather than at the bottom of each page), then that 
frustration will be in relation to expectancy norms. Ideally, the different types of norms 
reinforce one another, so that translators tend to do what clients and readers expect of 
them. In times of cultural change, the various types of norms might nevertheless be 
thrown out of kilter, and considerable tension can result. Indeed, in systems of self-
induced change, an extreme logic of the avant-garde may mean that all text producers, 
including translators, set about breaking norms, and text users thus expect norms to be 
broken. That is, norm-breaking can become the norm, as in extreme Modernism.
The idea of norms and norm-breaking has been important for the way 
descriptive research relates to the other paradigms of translation theory. If we apply the 

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concept of norms seriously, we should probably give up the idea of defining once and 
for all what a good translation is supposed to be (although it is perhaps still possible to 
say what a good or bad social effect might look like, and thus evaluate the way norms 
work, cf. Pym 1998b). In fact, the very notion of what a translation is must become very 
relative. As we have said, this