spontaneous stylistic observations (”English scientific texts are like small talk compared to German scientific text”), or
spontaneous sociolinguistic observations (”Russians like diminutive suffixes better than Hungarians.”)
spontaneous text-linguistic observations (”The sentences of Indo-European languages start with a longer introductory part than the corresponding Hungarian sentences and have to be shortened in the Hungarian translation” or ”English, German, and Russian texts are more impersonal than Hungarian texts.”)
Translation Studies
1. Introduction to the theory of translation
Krisztina Károly, Spring, 2006 Sources: Klaudy, 2003; Baker, 1998

The nature of the translator’s
The medium of the translator’s activity = two languages
communicating in two Ls at the same time can never be as instinctive and unconscious as communicating only in one in translation, even the most instinctive translator develops ideas about the relationship between the two Ls, their similarities and differences, their relationship with reality, the similarities and differences in the way the two Ls segment reality linguistically, etc.
Earlier: translation was mostly done for pleasure by writers, poets, statesmen, priests, and scholars to satisfy their individual literary, political, and scientific ambitions. Second half of the 20th century: translating became a mass activity (source of earning a living) has become a profession in its own right
were not pooled for centuries!
The idea of an uninterrupted and organic development of TS must be rejected for 3 main reasons:
(1) Translation as a profession
“their ambition to explain translation phenomena and create theories is closely related to the very nature of this activity, regulated, on the one hand, by certain objective rules, and permitting, on the other, a number of subjective choices” (Klaudy, 2003, p.23)
The object of the translator’s activity = the text
Theories are related to the object of the translator’s activity, i.e. the text, because every text (e.g., a piece of literature, a scientific research article, an advertisement or an editorial), allows for several possible interpretations the translator often has to defend his own interpretation of the text against the potentially differing interpretations of critics, readers, and the public at large.
Is there continuity in the theory
of translation?
Practicing translators will often make
spontaneous contrastive linguistic observations (”Hungarian prefers verbs as opposed to Indo-European languages which prefer nouns.”)
activity = creative activity
The translator faces a number of choices and decisions.
decisions are partly subjective, partly objective (some of the translator’s subjective choices are based on objective factors)