60 Descriptive translation studies and beyond

fixed and given, and their establishment forms an inseparable part of any study of translation as a norm-governed activity. Nevertheless, we can safely assume at least that the relations which do exist have to do with the initial norm. They might even be found to intersect it -- another important reason to retain the opposition between 'adequacy' and 'acceptability' as a basic coordinate system for the formulation of explanatory hypotheses.⁴

Operational norms as such may be described as serving as a model, in accordance with which translations come into being, whether involving the norms realized by the source text (i.e., adequate translation) plus certain modifications, or purely target norms, or a particular compromise between the two. Every model supplying performance instructions may be said to act as a restricting factor: it opens up certain options while closing others. Consequently, when the first position is fully adopted, the translation can hardly be said to have been made into the target language as a whole. Rather, it is made into a model- language, which is at best some part of the former and at worst an artificial, and as such nonexistent variety.⁵ In this last case, the translation is not really introduced into the target culture either, but is imposed on it, so to speak. Sure, it may eventually carve a niche for itself in the latter, but there is no initial attempt to accommodate it to any existing 'slot'. On the other hand, when the second position is adopted, what a translator is introducing into the target culture

4. Thus, for instance, in sectors where the pursuit of adequate translation is marginal, it is highly probable that indirect translation would also become common, on occasion even preferred over direct translation. By contrast, a norm which prohibits mediated translation is likely to be connected with a growing proximity to the initial norm of adequacy. Under such circumstances, if indirect translation is still performed, the fact will at least be concealed, if not outright denied.

5. And see, in this connection, Izre'el's "Rationale for Translating Ancient Texts into a Modern Language" (1994). In an attempt to come up with a method for translating an Akkadian myth which would be presented to modern Israeli audiences in an oral performance, he purports to combine a "feeling-of-antiquity" with a "feeling-of- modernity" in a text which would be altogether simple and easily comprehensible by using a host of lexical items of biblical Hebrew in Israeli Hebrew grammatical and syntactic structures. Whereas "the lexicon ... would serve to give an ancient flavor to the text, the grammar would serve to enable modern perception". It might be added that this is a perfect mirror image of the way Hebrew translators started simulating spoken Hebrew in their texts: spoken lexical items were inserted in grammatical and syntactic structures which were marked for belonging to the written varieties (Ben-Shahar 1983), which also meant 'new' into 'old'.

NORMS IN TRANSLATION 61

(which is indeed what s/he can be described as doing now) is a version of the original work, cut to the measure of a preexisting model. (And see our discussion of the opposition between the 'translation of literary texts' and 'literary trans- lation' in Excursus B as well as the detailed presentation of the Hebrew transla- tion of a German Schlaraffenland text in Chapter 8.)

The apparent contradiction between any traditional concept of equivalence and the limited model into which a translation has just been claimed to be moulded can only be resolved by postulating that it is norms that determine the (type and extent of) equivalence manifested by actual translations. The study of norms thus constitutes a vital step towards establishing just how the functional-relational postulate of equivalence (see Chapter 1, Section 5 and Chapter 3, Section 6) has been realized -- whether in one translated text, in the work of a single translator or 'school' of translators, in a given historical period, or in any other justifiable selection.⁶ What this approach entails is a clear wish to retain the notion of equivalence, which various contemporary approaches (e.g., Hönig and Kußmaul 1982; Holz-Mänttäri 1984; Snell-Hornby 1988) have tried to do without, while introducing one essential change into it: from an ahistorical, largely prescriptive concept to a historical one. Rather than being a single relationship, denoting a recurring type of invariant, it comes to refer to any relation which is found to have characterized translation under a specified set of circumstances.

At the end of a full-fledged study it will probably be found that translational norms, hence the realization of the equivalence postulate, are all, to a large extent, dependent on the position held by translation -- the activity as well as its products -- in the target culture. An interesting field for study is therefore comparative: the nature of translational norms as compared to those governing non-translational kinds of text-production. In fact, this kind of study is absolute- ly vital, if translating and translations are to be appropriately contextualized.