Review - Book Report/Review Example

Munday's second edition of Introducing Translation Studies (2008) is perfectly competent, but it feels like he has translated only words, no music: He discusses the critical theories and interpretations of translation, but does so purely summarily as a mechanic, rather than trying to bring in the art, passion and importance. In Chapter 1, Munday discusses the basic, main issues of translation studies. Most people when thinking of “translation” think of interlingual translation: Putting a language from one form into another.

But Munday notes that Jacobson has put forward two more types of translation: Intralingual, where something is translated within its own language (perhaps to reduce offensive content for children, or to translate to be easier to read for a different dialect or accent) and intersemiotic, translating from verbal to non-verbal or back. Indeed, once one thinks about it, there is very little difference, either philosophically or practically, between the techniques employed in changing the presentation of meaning in something from one language to another and techniques employed in changing the presentation of meaning to be more clear or more technical or to a different medium of presentation entirely (e.g. “translating” a book to a movie). . hapter 2, he discusses the history of translation, with discussion about “literal”, “free” and “faithful” translation, a debate he terms “sterile”.

But he also quotes “Traddutore, traditore” - the translator is a traitor, which seems hardly sterile at all. Indeed, the wide translation of Martin Luther's Letters in an accessible manner in his own view of translating languages using common, everyday speech styles and word choices helped facilitate one of the most explosive social changes in European history. He notes that most translators before the 19th century failed to discuss adaptation, but I think that this chapter is only of historical interest because he is ignoring that pre-19th century cultures had less cultural contact, less languages to translate and fewer forms.

Not all of their insights will be fungible, obviously, because prior to the 19th century, the degree of world integration was not to the point where the entire planet had to get major texts translated within a year so they could be shipped in a day, and did not have the array of forms we do today (Web, film, etc.) Munday could have made this chapter far more applicable by trying to find the philosophical elements of the past that could be practical for the modern era. Chapter 3 moves on to meaning and equivalence studies in the Jakobsonian vein.

In post-modernist philosophy and modern linguistics, signifier and sign are separated and socially constructed, so since there is no equivalence between code-units, the focus should be on making sure meaning is preserved. Nida tries to apply Chomsky's universal grammar, arguing that there is something universal about language after all. Contrasting these two radically different approaches, the difference between Foucault and Chomsky, and