RT and the ESIT 'théorie du sens'
As an ESIT graduate and relevantist, I'm gratified that someone else has
noticed the similarity
between these two theories. In spirit and ontogeny they certainly have in
common a dissatisfaction/frustration with code-based approaches to
communication. They are not really
comparable in terms of scope and development, of course. Although
Seleskovitch believed translation and especially interpreting offered a
unique window on linguistic communication, the ESIT theory was never
developed into a fully worked out theory of communication and cognition ;
its founders were not distinguished trained semanticists and
anthroplogists, but passionate practitioners of multilingual communicators
determined to have the specificities of T & I recognised by academe, and to
demonstrate (as they have done) that only a pragmatic approach, free of the
distraction of linguistics, can succeed in training interpreters and
translators. Cross-fertilisation with RT is unlikely; the ESIT theorists
have always claimed 'ab ovo' status and acknowledge no external influence,
save for a vague tip of the cap to writers like Ducrot and Barbizet (a
connectionist). As for influence in the other direction, linguists
including pragmaticists have not usually heard of translation theories. But
any evdience of mutual influence would be fascinating and welcome ! In any
event, this has finally given me the push I needed to put some of these
papers on F. Yus' bibliography.... :-) e.g.:
Setton, Robin. 2002. Traductologie et théorie de la pertinence. In
Fortunato Israël (ed.). Identité, altérité, équivalence ? La traduction
comme relation. Actes du Colloque International tenu à l'ESIT les 24, 25 et
26 mai 2000, en hommage à Marianne Lederer. Paris, Caen: Lettres Modernes
Minard. Israel. 97-112.
Seleskovitch: A Radical Pragmatist Before Her Time: Langage, langues et
mémoire: études de la prise de notes en interprétation consécutive. Danica
Seleskovitch. Paris: Minard Lettres Modernes, 1975. The Translator 8-1
(2002), 117-124.
Setton, Robin. 1999. Cognitive pragmatics in T & I research. In Lugrís,
Alberto Álvarez & Anxo Fernández Ocampo (eds). Anovar/Anosar Estudios de
traducción e interpretación. Universidade de Vigo, Servicio de
Publicacións. (3 Volumes), Vol.I. 307-315. (Conference on Translation and
Interpretation, University of Vigo, March 25-27 1998).
Copies provided with pleasure.
All the best,
Robin
At 12:30 25-11-04 -0600, you wrote:
>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
Robin Setton
Director,
Graduate Institute of Translation and Interpretation Studies
(GITIS)
Fujen Catholic University
Hsinchuang
Taipei, Taiwan
Professor of Interpretation
ETI, Geneva (on leave)
Tel. (September 2004): +33-1-44786849
From October 2004: +886-2-2903-1111 ext 2567
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