Toury (1992), for example,
points out the usefulness of descriptions in the
training situation , since one can always
present alternatives in order to illustrate that “everything has its price.” We have noted
above how
Chesterman (1999) also argues that empirical research should reinforce
training, since it can be used to predict the success or failure of certain strategies. As for
the apparent promotion of conservatism, Toury proposes that we train students how to
break norms, as indeed he himself has done within Translation Studies.
With respect to the supposed lack of a human dimension, Toury’s abstract
concept of norms is offset by serious interest in how translators become translators
(1995: 241-258), and recent moves within the descriptivist project have been toward the
incorporation of sociological models, particularly
Bourdieu ’s concept of “habitus”
(variously after Hermans 1999 and Simeoni 1998). This would meet up with moves to
write the history of translation as a
history of translators (cf. Delisle and Woodsworth
1995, Pym 1998a). It also connects with the many translation scholars who have been
engaged in writing literary history, often in a humanist mode where translators play
leading roles.
Those arguments notwithstanding, there has been considerable resistance to
descriptivism within training institutions, which have generally obtained better mileage
from the Germanic theories of purpose. At the same time, the basic thrust of target-side
studies threatens to relieve traditional departments of modern languages of what they do
best (teaching source languages and literatures), and is thus unlikely to curry favor
there. Descriptivist theory has thus tended to operate on the fringes of the more
established training communities, guiding PhD theses useful for employment purposes.
So where will the descriptive paradigm go from here? Recent calls have been for
a “
