Descriptive Translation Studies And Translation Studies

DTS is an important component of translation studies as a discipline. In 1972 James S. Holmes put forward his conception about translation studies as a separate branch in his article The Name and Nature of Translation Studies. As a central branch of translation studies, DTS aims to locate translated works in the target culture system on the basis of inexhaustible description of the function and the product. Such a methodology plays an instrumental role in elevating translation studies to an institutional authority in the West and sheds illuminating light on the construction of translation studies in China. Although Chinese scholars have made attempts in the respect, none of them supersedes Holmes' overall scheme for the discipline to date. Scholars from the descriptive camp lay much stress on the need to describe translational phenomena in the world of our experience and pay adequate attention to role of TT in the target culture, authorization of texts to be translated, publication and the roles of translators, and so forth by describing the products and their functions in the target culture system. It is this target-orientation that leads to the thriving development of translation studies in the West. Due to the underlying scholarship different from their Western colleagues, Chinese scholars ignore the descriptive branch in their respective conceptions about translation studies due to the different scholarship, which will be elaborated in the present thesis.The present thesis is to trace the origin, growth, and development of DTS in the West. Based on the detailed description, a tentative effort is made to dwell on the school's relevance for translation studies in China as a separate discipline. A point will be made that scanty attention to DTS - a pure area of the field, lies in the different underlying academic traditions. A note must be taken that no approach, however sophisticated, can provide any ready answer to all the questions involved. There is no exception with DTS, similarly plagued by its innate drawbacks. Such blind spots should be avoided in constructing translation studies in China. The integration of prescriptive approaches with descriptive one promises a sound basis for the further development of the domain.The present research program comprises the following sections:Chapter 1 serves as the introduction of the thesis and focuses on the overall scheme of the present research program, the aim and the retrospective generalization of the previous research work, characteristics of traditional approach to translation studies and its limitation in changed contexts, and the sketchy survey of DTS in the west.Chapter II dwells on the whole process of DTS in the West. Some important key concepts related to DTS will be elaborated from a critical point of view, and hence a panoramic view of its preparation, development, propagation, expansion and its prospect.Chapter III mainly examines DTS's contributions to the field and its limitation in the changing contexts with a number of cases to testify its validity.Chapter IV relates the status quo of Chinese translation studies to DTS, as widely recognized that translation studies as a separate discipline in China has gained momentum from DTS.Conclusion sums up the whole research project and points out that translation studies now draws on the neighboring disciplines and shows a nature of interdisciplinarity - a general trend in the field now.