56 Descriptive translation studies and beyond

2. Translation as a norm-governed activity

Translation is a kind of activity which inevitably involves at least two languages and two cultural traditions, i.e., at least two sets of norm-systems on each level. Thus, the 'value' behind it may be described as consisting of two major elements:

(1) being a text in a certain language, and hence occupying a position, or filling in a slot, in the appropriate culture, or in a certain section thereof;

(2) constituting a representation in that language/culture of another, pre- existing text in some other language, belonging to some other culture and occupying a definite position within it.

These two types of requirement derive from two sources which -- even though the distance between them may vary greatly -- are nevertheless always different and therefore often incompatible. Were it not for the regulative capacity of norms, the tensions between the two sources of constraints would have to be resolved on an entirely individual basis, and with no clear yardstick to go by. Extreme free variation may well have been the result, which it certainly is not. Rather, translation behaviour within a culture tends to manifest certain regularities, one consequence being that even if they are unable to account for deviations in any explicit way, the persons-in-the-culture can often tell when a translator has failed to adhere to sanctioned practices.

It has proven useful and enlightening to regard the basic choice which can be made between requirements of the two different sources as constituting an initial norm. Thus, a translator may subject him-/herself either to the original text, with the norms it has realized, or to the norms active in the target culture, or in that section of it which would host the end product. If the first stance is adopted, the translation will tend to subscribe to the norms of the source text, and through them also to the norms of the source language and culture. This tendency, which has often been characterized as the pursuit of adequate trans- lation,² may well entail certain incompatibilities with target norms and prac- tices, especially those lying beyond the mere linguistic ones. If, on the other hand, the second stance is adopted, norm systems of the target culture are triggered and set into motion. Shifts from the source text would be an almost inevitable price. Thus, whereas adherence to source norms determines a

2. "An adequate translation is a translation which realizes in the target language the textual relationships of a source text with no breach of its own [basic] linguistic system" (Even-Zohar 1975: 43; my translation).

NORMS IN TRANSLATION 57

translation's adequacy as compared to the source text, subscription to norms originating in the target culture determines its acceptability.

Obviously, even the most adequacy-oriented translation involves shifts from the source text. In fact, the occurrence of shifts has long been acknowl- edged as a true universal of translation. However, since the need itself to deviate from source-text patterns can always be realized in more than one way, the actual realization of so-called obligatory shifts, to the extent that it is non- random, and hence not idiosyncratic, is already truly norm-governed. So is everything that has to do with non-obligatory shifts, which are of course more than just possible in real-life translation: they occur everywhere and tend to constitute the majority of shifting in any single act of human translation, render- ing the latter a contributing factor to, as well as the epitome of regularity.

The term 'initial norm' should not be overinterpreted, however. Its initiality derives from its superordinance over particular norms which pertain to lower, and therefore more specific levels. The kind of priority postulated here is basically logical, and need not coincide with any 'real', i.e., chronological order of application. The notion is thus designed to serve first and foremost as an explanatory tool: Even if no clear macro-level tendency can be shown, any micro-level decision can still be accounted for in terms of adequacy vs. acceptability. On the other hand, in cases where an overall choice has been made, it is not necessary that every single lower-level decision be made in full accord with it. We are still talking regularities, then, but not necessarily of any absolute type. It is unrealis- tic to expect absolute regularities anyway, in any behavioural domain.

Actual translation decisions (the results of which the researcher would confront) will necessarily involve some ad hoc combination of, or compromise between the two extremes implied by the initial norm. Still, for theoretical and methodological reasons, it seems wiser to retain the opposition and treat the two poles as distinct in principle: If they are not regarded as having distinct theoreti- cal statuses, how would compromises differing in type or in extent be distin- guished and accounted for?

Finally, the claim that it is basically a norm-governed type of behaviour applies to translation of all kinds, not only literary, philosophical or biblical translation, which is where most norm-oriented studies have been conducted so far. As has recently been claimed and demonstrated in an all too sketchy exchange of views in Target (M. Shlesinger 1989b and Harris 1990), similar things can even be said of conference interpreting. Needless to say, this does not mean that the exact same conditions apply to all kinds of translation. In fact, their application in different cultural sectors is precisely one of the aspects that