Studia Islandica - 01.06.1994, Page 18

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While many, if not the majority of the works of the time,
reflect almost exclusively personal experience, there are
attempts to systematise and generalise. In an essay written
in 1540 entitled De la maniére de bien traduire d’une
langue en autre Étienne Dolet formulates five conditions a
translator should seek to fulfill:
1. He must understand “parfaictement le sens et matiere de l’autheur
qu’il traduict”.
2. He needs to have a comprehensive knowledge of the source lan-
guage and in addition must be “pareillement excelient en la langue
en laquelle il se mect á traduire”.
3. His translations should not be bound by word-for-word con-
stricts, but instead the units of translation should be chosen “et faira
en sorte que l’intention de l’autheur sera exprimée ...”.
4. He should guard against the excess use of loan-words derived
from the source text.1
5. His style in the target language should reflect that of the source,
acting on “l’observation des nombres oratoires”. (Quoted in Peder-
sen 1987:14-15)
Even at this early stage discussion of translation is
coloured by each writer’s understanding of his purpose: for
Luther, translation of the Bible was missionary work, con-
veying a message - to a largely unenlightened audience.
For the rhetorician Batteux, who devoted several chapters
to translation in his Principes de la Litterature, published
in 1760, translation of literature was a means to approach
' Although some scholars have objected to the unwelcome connotations
inherent in the terms “source text” and “target text” they will be used here as
they have become generally accepted in discussions of translation and no
more preferable terms have been suggested. They are to be understood as
symbols, a simple and efficient means of denoting the language one is trans-
lating from and the language into which one is translating.
The abbreviations SL and TL are sometimes used to represent source and
target languages respectively, while “source text” and “target text” are unab-
breviated.