Studia Islandica - 01.06.1994, Blaðsíða 216
214
After reviewing the major currents of scholarly thinking
and writing through the ages and analysing the aspects of
translation with which they deal, the translation theorist
Kelly arrives at the conclusion that in accepting the respon-
sibility of translation the translator makes a commitment of
trust to his author. This is in effect a pledge to submit his
personal creativity to the will and intent of the original
author.
This necessary feeling of community, Kelly continues,
begins with an understanding of the workings of the source
text, its operis lex. Without this, as we have seen in our
analysis here, further work is crippled from the start. Kelly
defines these operational laws as having three separate
functions: the first is the communicative function, the bal-
ance it maintains between text as symbol, symptom, and
signal, to use Biihler’s terms. Secondly, there is the ques-
tion of values in the message: what are its essential intra-
and extralingual characteristics. Once these two areas have
been explored there remains the third and final require-
ment, the assessment of self: whether the translator is capa-
ble of or even interested in translating the author on his
own terms.
Trust, then, establishes relationships, assesses values, asks whether
the author’s meaning has a sufficiently interesting stock of energy
before one’s own measure of oneself. From this flows the transla-
tor’s intention, his terms of reference which drive him towards the
unidimensional, objective, positional relationship, or the multival-
ued, subjective, personal relationship. It is here that fidelity or infi-
delity starts. (Kelly 1979:217)
The point which I think Kelly is attempting to make, and
which I would stress after examining the works discussed
here, is that, given the variety of language dimensions
involved in creating a major work of literature, there can be
little point in attempting to prescribe definitive rules for
translation. What we can demand is respect for the intent