In his ”Translation Studies,” author Lawrence Venuti begins by zeroing in on American translation studies, which he differentiates from the same in other countries (most notably Spanish, Portuguese and French-speaking nations) by noting that, in our own United States, the trade “remains very much a fledgling discipline…[which] occurs predominantly in isolated courses…scattered across various institutional sites [and]…fragmented among diverse and conflicting methodologies” (294). Noting that American programs operate with a “greater value assigned to literary criticism and linguistic research than to translation practice,” Venuti sets out to solicit various authorities and historical realities which, leading into the present day, help generate a functional ‘definition’ of translation studies: what it intends, how it is limited, why and in which fashion it must be revisited. Providing a tripartite assay under the subheadings equivalence & shifts (focus on changes in denotation\connotation regarding texts), cultural systems & norms (with an eye to the cultures involved in every translation—to and from), and ethics & politics (concerning issues of “shift” vis-à-vis ‘target’ cultures’ receptiveness), Venuti cites Nida, Derrida, Lewis & others almost as guideposts or markers along a ‘road’ to outlining the contemporary status of the field, now diverse enough to allow for competing (complementary?) schools of thought in the form of decontextualization, polysystems, and cultural analysis\interpretation, among others.
Consider a topos of Possible\Impossible as pertinent to the question, “Is meaningful translation possible?” Here one must distinguish between “rewriting or rewording in the same language” (intra-lingual) and “rewriting in a different language” (inter-lingual): Venuti, I propose, would allow for the former with fewer restrictions\caveats than the latter. He suggests directions for further (collaborative) research—especially ‘joint ventures’ between experts in linguistics and cultural studies—which intimate hope for the future of the field (308-9). Ever fraught with a certain tension arising out of the interplay of cultures, languages and ethics, translation may yet develop and diversify. And provided we observe its limitations and proper scope, it may even serve to generate useful interpretative dialogue between entities in our increasingly interconnected—and complex—world of nations.
