Translation Studies Diary of 29 July, 2024

Toury hoped that by identifying and iteratively adjusting norms, it would be possible to formulate ‘laws’ of translation. The tentative laws he proposed are:
(1) The law of growing standardization
(2) The law of interference

(1) The law of growing standardization
In translation, the source language is often modified and sometimes ignored in favour of the more habitual and common expressions provided by the target language.
e.g.,
Terms frequently appear in Japanese that only appear in patent specifications, but their rarity is rarely reflected in English translations.
載置する→place
螺合する→screw

(2) The law of interference
Interference of linguistic features of the source language into the translated text, which is copied as a ‘kind of default’.
e.g.,
To express the definite article, add 「前記」, which rarely appears in ordinary Japanese expressions.
"the"→「前記」