Translators ́strategies and creativity : Selected papers from International Conference on Translation and Interpreting, 9th

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This volume brings together a selection of papers presented at the IXth Intemational Conference on Translation and Interpreting (September 25-27, 1995, Prague) jointly organized by the Institute of Translation Studies, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, and the Ecole de Traduction et d'Interprétation, University of Geneva. The organizers dedicated this conference to Jirí Lery (1926-1967) and Anton Popovic (1933-1984), two scholars who made important contributions to the development of translation studies in the 20th century and whose names are often mentioned in connection with two European schools of translation studies, the Polysystem Theory and the Manipulation School. Both scholars trace their heritage to the Prague Linguistic Circle, whose development in tum was significantly influenced by Ferdinand de Saussure, the linguist whose work is foreyer associated with the University of Geneva. The Prague School integrated both linguistic and literary phenomena into the wider system of social values of a particular cornmunity. Lery's objective was to isolate those factors in the translation process that affect the translator's work and to improve our understanding of how a particular method of translation potentially modifies the effect the translated text has on the reader. For him translation was a process of communication, and he can thus be considered to be an .important forel1lnner of contemporary thinking on translation. It was only after his death that the idea of a normative, prescriptive approach towards translation was replacep by a new approach that respected the translator's individuality and creativity and viewed translation as a process of cornmunication, in which the original author played as important a role as the translator. The contributions in Sections 2 and 3 focus on one or more aspects of this issue.