58 Descriptive translation studies and beyond

should be submitted to study. In principle, the claim is also valid for every society and historical period, thus offering a framework for historically oriented studies which would also allow for comparison.

3. Translational norms: An overview

Norms can be expected to operate not only in translation of all kinds, but also at every stage in the translating event, and hence to be reflected on every level of its product. It has proven convenient to first distinguish two larger groups of norms applicable to translation: preliminary vs. operational.

Preliminary norms have to do with two main sets of considerations which are often interconnected: those regarding the existence and actual nature of a definite translation policy, and those related to the directness of translation.

Translation policy refers to those factors that govern the choice of text- types, or even of individual texts, to be imported through translation into a particular culture/language at a particular point in time. Such a policy will be said to exist inasmuch as the choice is found to be nonrandom. Different policies may of course apply to different subgroups, in terms of either text-types (e.g., literary vs. non-literary) or human agents and groups thereof (e.g., different publishing houses), and the interface between the two often offers very fertile grounds for policy hunting.

Considerations concerning directness of translation involve the threshold of tolerance for translating from languages other than the ultimate source lan- guage: is indirect translation permitted at all? In translating from what source languages/text-types/periods (etc.) is it permitted/prohibited/tolerated/preferred? What are the permitted/prohibited/tolerated/preferred mediating languages? Is there a tendency/obligation to mark a translated work as having been mediated, or is this fact ignored/camouflaged/denied? If it is mentioned, is the identity of the mediating language supplied as well? And so on.

Operational norms, in turn, may be conceived of as directing the decisions made during the act of translation itself. They affect the matrix of the text -- i.e., the modes of distributing linguistic material in it -- as well as the textual make- up and verbal formulation as such. They thus govern -- directly or indirectly -- the relationships as well that would obtain between the target and source texts; i.e., what is more likely to remain invariant under transformation and what will change.

So-called matricial norms may govern the very existence of target-language

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material intended as a substitute for the corresponding source-language material (and hence the degree of fullness of translation), its location in the text (or the form of actual distribution), as well as the textual segmentation.³ The extent to which omissions, additions, changes of location and manipulations of segmenta- tion are referred to in the translated texts (or around them) may also be deter- mined by norms, even though the one can very well occur without the other.

Obviously, the borderlines between the various matricial phenomena are not clear-cut. For instance, large-scale omissions often entail changes of segmen- tation as well, especially if the omitted portions have no clear boundaries, or textual-linguistic standing, i.e., if they are not integral sentences, paragraphs or chapters. By the same token, a change of location may often be accounted for as an omission (in one place) compensated by an addition (elsewhere). The decision as to what may have 'really' taken place is thus description-bound: What one is after is (more or less cogent) explanatory hypotheses, not necessarily 'true-to-life' accounts, which one can never be sure of anyway.

Textual-linguistic norms, in turn, govern the selection of material to formulate the target text in, or replace the original textual and linguistic material with. Textual-linguistic norms may either be general, and hence apply to translation qua translation, or particular, in which case they would pertain to a particular text-type and/or mode of translation only. Some of them may be identical to the norms governing non-translational text-production, but such an identity should never be taken for granted. This is the methodological reason why no study of translation can, or should proceed from the assumption that the latter is representative of the target language, or of any overall textual tradition thereof. (And see our discussion of 'translation-specific lexical items' in Chapter 11.)

It is clear that preliminary norms have both logical and chronological precedence over the operational ones. This is not to say that between the two major groups there are no relationships whatsoever, including mutual influ- ences, or even two-way conditioning. However, these relations are by no means

3. The claim that principles of segmentation follow universal patterns is just a figment of the imagination of some discourse and text theoreticians intent on uncovering as many universal principles as possible. In actual fact, there have been various traditions (or 'models') of segmentation, and the differences between them always have implications for translation, whether they are taken to bear on the formulation of the target text or ignored. Even the segmentation of sacred texts such as the Old Testament itself has often been tampered with by its translators, normally in order to bring it closer to target cultural habits, and by so doing enhance the translation's acceptability.