Studia Islandica - 01.06.1994, Blaðsíða 54
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are overly restricted and as a result inevitably become nor-
mative and prescriptive.
Admittedly the position occupied by the translation in
the target culture is an important factor in determining
translation priorities. For literary translation especially,
maintains Toury, the translated text is also intended to be a
literary text, “an instance of performance in the framework
of a certain literary system” (Toury 1980:36). This target
language literary system, Toury contends, imposes certain
demands upon the text which must be given priority in
translation.
If a literary translation is first and foremost a given empirical phe-
nomenon, acquiring its identity by virtue of its position within the
target literary system, irrespective of how it came into being, it fol-
lows that all questions concerning its ST, the exact operation(s)
which produced it, the relationships obtaining between TT and ST
and the justifications for regarding these relationships (in accor-
dance with the definition of translation) as equivalence are not only
secondary to TT’s classification as a literary translation, but also
objects for study, rather than basic assumptions. (Toury 1980:37,
emphasis mine)
Toury’s point is certainly a valid one, if perhaps slightly
overemphasised. Translation cannot help but be shaped
first and foremost by the raw materials of the target lan-
guage as this is the stuff of which it is made. As such, the
lexis, grammar, and syntax of the target language are pri-
mary determiners for any translation. Vermeer echoes this
when he writes of the necessary “Entthronung des
Ausgangtextes”:
Wir haben bisher mehrfach betont, daB Translation ein ganzheitlich-
er Vorgang ist, bei dem durchaus nicht nur Sprachzeichen trans-
kodiert und Sprachzeichen nicht nur transkodiert werden. Immer ist
auch eine Neuordnung der Relation “Situation: verbalisierte
Situationsteile” und eine Neuordnung der Ausgangs- zu den Ziel-
werten im Spiel. (ReiB and Vermeer 1984:64-65)