Something similar can be found in German in the development of translational action theory (from Holz-Manttari, 1984) and functionalist Skopostheorie (from ReiR & Vermeer, 1984). Holz-Manttdri borrows initial general perspectives from the action theory of von Wright (1968), adding insights from both extensions of the action and functionalist social anthropology (citations from Humboldt and Malinowski). The basic idea for Vermeer, on the other hand, is that translating is an action carried out in order to achieve a purpose (Skopos). This purpose is highly variable (it may or may not involve equivalence to a source) and is negotiated with any number of social actors. Holz-Mânttari stresses the complexity of these negotiations, the translator's social role as an expert, and the many modes of translational action (since her translators do far more than translate). Vermeer would give more weight to the client's commission and to the conceptual priorities involved. Despite their fairly complex terminological webs, both might claim to have 'dethroned the source text' (Vermeer, 1989), revealing that there are numerous other determinants on what translators do. Within German-language research, this has been enough to form a close-knit group of self-citing theorists, weaving the image of a theoretical revolution, an epistemological break with a millennial past of fidelities and equivalencies. The ideas of action theory, however, were by no means the exclusive preserve of this general translation theory. The notion of purpose-based action has had a philosophical language since Kant and is common enough in any sociological approach. It could lead to a focus on purposes, competencies and expertise theory, as it has done in German, but it also has several feet in linguistic pragmatics, deontics, system theory and new methodologies of empirical observation. These latter aspects have been better developed beyond Skopostheorie, yet in ways that remain in fundamental agreement with its founding principles.
One should not be surprised, then, when a more cognitive kind of action theory, coming from the pragmatics of Watzlawick et al. (1967) or even the ethics of Varela (1992), appears in alternative theorisations of translational action. For example, Monacelli and Punzo (2001) start from the paradoxes like the fact that a translation is at once equivalent and non-equivalent to its source, depending on the momentary perspective of the observer. Such relations can be mapped by fuzzy logic (cf. also Grant, 1999). What might be surprising, though, is that the origins of action theory, whatever its social,
mathematical or psychological extensions, lie in analytical philosophy, in the tradition of Wittgenstein and Quine. That, at least, is where one must place the pioneering work of von Wright (1968) and Watzlawick et al. (1968).
So would the interest in action theory represent a late awakening to analytical philosophy? It seems more the case that the translation theorists concerned were turning to fragments of philosophical discourses, not in order to legitimise any systematic analytical approach, but as part of an attempt to solve isolated and often long-standing problems. Andrew Chesterman (1993), for example, cites the pragmatic branch of philosophical inquiry, again referring to von Wright, in order to define the notions of 'norms' and their implications for ethics. Yet Chesterman (1997) also borrows from Karl Popper on several occasions either to clarify concepts (as with the notion of 'three worlds') or to adapt specific ideas. In the field of ethics, for example, Popper observed that people agree more on what is bad than on what is good. Chesterman thus proposes that translation should have a similarly 'negative ethics', based on avoiding misunderstandings rather than on any ideal of complete equivalence.
Another use of philosophical discourse as a problem-solving tool would be Arnaud Laygues' readings of Buber, Marcel and Levinas (Laygues, 2001), none of whom discussed translation at length, but all of whom developed ideas that can help translators think about their human relations. When Martin Buber, for instance, regards I—you discourse as ethically more authentic than third-person discourse, Laygues proposes that the ethical translator should regard both text and reader as second persons, not as objects. When Emmanuel Levinas regards the other (the person who is non-I) as a face to which we have certain ethical obligations, Laygues proposes that the translator seek an adequate ethical relation with the other (text, author, reader) and only then be concerned with the deontology of professional action. In a similar vein, Melby (1995) has attempted to apply Levinas's insights on otherness to the general field of language technology. In all these cases, philosophical discourse is used as a source of stimulating analogies or necessary terminological precision, but not as a ready-made solution to all the problems of translation studies.
Thanks to such borrowings, the translation theories of the 1990s were increasingly concerned with ethical issues. This was partly a reaction against traditional concepts like fidelity and equivalence, which 20th century uncertainty had left without any conceptual grounding. Yet it was also a response to the empiricism that had motivated many parts of translation studies in the 1980s. Equivalence, for example, had become a fact of all translations for descriptive translation studies (cf. Toury, 1980), dissolving the concept to the extent that it could no longer state what translators should do; the scholar's task was merely to describe its variants, norms and possible laws. At the same time, equivalence had become no more than a restricted 'special case' for Skopostheorie, which sought to provide translators with alternative professional guidelines (cf. Pym, 1995). For what were becoming deconstructionist or postmodern approaches, however, notions like equivalence and fidelity were traditional essentialist illusions, unable to provide any guidelines at all. Barbara Johnson (1985) proposed 'taking fidelity philosophically', as might a cheated spouse. That loss of faith left a gap, allowing for a return to fundamental ethical issues, this time based on the texture of human relationships rather than on any empiricism of performance. Not gratuitously, this return to ethics has accompanied greater attention to dialogue interpreting, where more importance is intuitively given to people rather than to texts (see Pym, 2001).
If there is a particular way of using philosophical discourse at this level, it is frequently not for isolated problem solving. Some theorists take a whole system on board, seeking its ethical consequences in a more global sense. Here one might return to Walter Benjamin (1923) reflecting on his translations of Baudelaire through the worldview of Kabbalistic tradition (see Steiner, 1975). A more frequent point of departure is Jacques Derrida, tion (but surely it depends how they defined 'translation'?). For descriptive translation studies, the enemy was anyone who tried to tell translators how to translate, since that was prescriptivism (but can descriptions be entirely neutral?). For desconstructionists, it was anyone who believed in translation as 'meaning transfer' (but did anyone ever pretend you could pick up a meaning?).
Most of those enemies are actually quite difficult to find in translation theory, at least in the simplistic terms in which they have been attacked. And none of those binary oppositions is tenable in terms of contemporary philosophical discourse. It is for this reason, we suggest, that few philosophers would entirely identify with everything that translation theorists have done in their name.
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