Taking all this into account, we can thus consider style in translation from at least four potential viewpoints:
i) the style of the source text as an expression of its author's choices
ii) the style of the source text in its effects on the reader (and on the translator as reader)
iii) the style of the target text as an expression of choices made by its author (who is the translator)
iv) the style of the target text in its effects on the reader.
It is important that translation studies overall should not focus on either the style of the source text to the exclusion of the target text or vice versa, nor on the author of either text to the exclusion of its reader. But different types of study will focus on different aspects. The emphasis of the discussion in this book will be on points (ii) and (iii) above: the style of the source text as perceived by the translator and how it is conveyed or changed or to what extent it is or can be preserved in translation. This is because most discussion of style in translation has been concerned with the translation process, and the process necessarily most closely involves these two factors. Assumptions made about stylistic choices in the text, (i) above, are largely seen in the light of how their effects are experienced and understood by the translator. But there is a further reason for this focus, and it has to do with the relationship between theory and practice. Stylistics, and especially cognitive stylistics, the study of how the production and, especially, understanding of style are affected by the structure of the mind, has contributed a great deal to our understanding of how texts are read and interpreted. If stylistic approaches to translation are to be examined in their possible relation to practice, then it is the issue of how translators understand their source texts which will be of most immediate concern. This is not to say that the reception of the target text – (iv) above – has no influence on the outcome; the studies by Toury and Vermeer mentioned above (and see
also Hermans 1999) have shown clearly that it has. But, because of its focus on style as it affects the process of translation, the perspective taken in this book is that, though facts to do with the target language, culture and (in the case of literature) the target literary system do have an important influence on the process of translation, it is through the part they play in the translator's awareness of them, which forms part of the context of operation. Because stylistics includes, today, a broad understanding of context as what we know, there is no difficulty in potentially accommodating target text factors in a stylistic view. But it is not the main focus.
Most of the book's main concern, then, is with the translator and the translator's task, and encompasses the source-text author and the target -text reader to the extent that they impact upon this task.
A focus on the translator and the act of translation opens up the following question: is there a relationship between theory and practice which goes beyond a theoretical extrapolation from the description of practice? Though we can indeed use stylistic data from source text and target text to try and reconstruct the role of style in the translation process, and can consider statements from writers, readers, translators and scholars as data from which to construct an overall view of the role of style in translation, we can also argue that knowledge of theories and approaches can and should be part of a translator's toolkit, a position also argued for by de Beaugrande. This is not to say that a translation will (or should) be undertaken in accordance with a theoretical view. And it is certainly not to say that theory is under any obligation to offer guidelines for practice. The most we can expect, as Toury says, is that a description of process might allow us to draw tentative conclusions for practice. But I wish to suggest something at once less rigid and more profound: knowledge of possible and actual theories and views, of language, literature, translation or style, is as helpful to the translator as any other knowledge about the world in which s/he lives and operates.
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