Göttingen in the 1990s generally
preferred a
“transfer” model , which explicitly traced movements between particular
source and target cultures. Others have objected to the separation of the two cultures,
arguing that translators tend to work in an “
intercultural ” space in the overlap of
cultures (cf. Pym 1998a). More generally, as with the problem of defining translations,
the binary opposition of source and target has been increasingly criticized from within
the indeterminist paradigm, as we shall see later.
5.5 Translation Studies as an academic discipline The descriptivist call to science is in many respects a structuralist aspiration, crafted in
the belief that methodological research will reveal hidden relations. There is supposed
to be a wider logic beneath observable facts. That call to science is sometimes taken
further; “Sciences
qua sciences,” says Toury, “are characterized by an incessant quest
for laws” (1995a: 259, finding support in Even-Zohar 1986). The aim of Translation
Studies is thus assumed to be
to discover laws , and in the next chapter we will consider
a few of the laws proposed so far. What interests us here is more the way this
orientation has been able to shape a movement. On Toury’s view, Descriptive
Translation Studies not only has a starting point (the methodological identification and
analysis of facts) but also a general collective goal (the formulation of abstract laws
based on numerous observed facts). This is a paradigm able to lead somewhere.
In its historical setting, the general belief in science and its goals allowed
strangely
little space for self-critical analysis of the scholarly community, or indeed of
the social effects of the research itself. At the time the descriptivist paradigm was
developing, such questions were of little concern. There was such confidence in the
project, and presumably self-confidence in the researchers, that this became the first
paradigm able to position itself in relation to other paradigms. Indeed, it was from this
positioning that the discipline of Translation Studies itself was envisaged as a
coordinated collective undertaking. This can be seen in Figure 5, which shows
