Discuss George Steiner's Theory of Translation with Reference to Its Importance for Translation Theory as a Whole

. Discuss George Steiner's theory of translation with reference to its importance for translation theory as a whole.

"'... all of the children would jump into the Brod when it was so hot, and our parents would sit on the side of the water and play cards. Tell him.' I Told Him 'everyone had his own family, but it was something like they were all one big family. People would fight, yes, but it was nothing'"(Foer , 155)

George Steiner made an undeniable contribution to translation 'theory'. His ideas, as laid out in After Babel (1975), were very progressive when they were first published and they remain very relevant today. Steiner covered a great deal of new ground, most notably the idea that all communication involves translation. After Babel has influenced a vide variety of people, e.g. Brian Friel (McGrath), working in a range of different fields.

Ironically After Babel, which highlights the many difficulties involved in the process, and concept, of Translation has itself been translated into several languages ranging from Romanian to Chinese (Steiner , xi).

It is viewed as a key advance in the explanation of Translation. Naomi Blivin makes the claim that it is the "First systematic investigation of the theory and practices of Translation since the 18th Century" (Steiner). It is a comprehensive study of the subject of language and translation. It is both a controversial and seminal work that covers a great deal of new ground and has remained the most thorough book on this topic since it was first published in 1975 (Steiner , x). There had been no organized or detailed attempt to place translation at the heart of human communication or to explore the ways, in which the constraints on translatability and the potentialities of transfer between languages engage the philosophic enquiry into consciousness and into the meaning of meaning (Steiner , ix, x).

It deals with linguistic and philosophic notions - such as meaning, context, historic relativity, cultural aspects of the language and literature.

Steiner refutes the notion that translation is a scientific pursuit. He flatly denies that there can be any 'theories of translation'. According to Steiner the best a translator can aim for is to "articulate narrations of felt experience". He borrows the words of Wittgenstein to describe translation as 'an exact art' (Steiner , xvi).

Whereas the dominant concept for most of translation theory at this time (1960s & 70s) was equivalence (Venuti , 120...

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