Friends,
I've been reading Amparo Hurtado Albir's _Traducción y
Traductología: Introducción a la Traductología_ (Madrid:
Cátedra, 2001). The author discusses many translation theories,
among them the theory developed at the Ecole Supérieure
d´Interpretes et de Traducteurs (ESIT) by Seleskovitch (1968...)
and Lederer (1981...). As I read Hurtado´s characterizaton I
was struck by various similarities between the ESIT theory of
comprehension and Relevance Theory.
My guess is that, late in the evolution of the ESIT theory, it
was influenced by RT. For example, Hurtado quotes Lederer
(1994:58) as follows: "Todo texto es un compromiso entre un
explícito suficientemente corto para no cansar al enunciar cosas
ya sabidas y un implícito suficientemente evidente para que el
lector no pueda ignorar el sentido designado por lo explícito."
[Rough translation: All text is a compromise between what is
explicit, which must be sufficiently short so as to not tire by
stating known information, and what is implicit, which must be
sufficiently evident so the reader will not fail to grasp the
meaning indicated by what is explicit.] I think this comes
pretty close to saying that text must be relevant.
But was there earlier sharing in the other direction? That is,
what intellectual debt --if any-- does RT owe to earlier stages
of the evolving ESIT theory, especially to Seleskovitch's early
work? Or did the ESIT theory and RT develop independently,
similarities being due to the common cognitive soil in which
they were rooted?
Just curious, --David
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