The Language of Translation

Abstract

The paper discusses the translatorial attitudes to language applied by the translator during the process of translation. It views two types of 'language'- "language and its discourses" (language proper) and "discourses and its language" (langue), respectively ascribing them as prescriptivist and descriptivist approaches to interlingual transfer and argues that a solely prescriptivist approach to any text based on the linguistic material of the language without considering the larger discourse wherein the text is portrayed delimits or alters the original content and leads to aberrations from the source context and discourse. The paper posits that much higher levels of inter-lingual and inter-discursive equivalence can be accomplished by the translators when descriptivism and prescriptivism as translation approaches are applied in a combined (successive, and not amalgamated) form. The paper substantiates the complementarity of these two by using the indivisibility and unexclusiveness of the plains of content and expression further elaborated in the stranding of "language" and "discourse" as a single genetic ladder allowing endless transfer and interaction between the two. The paper then goes on to discuss the relationship between "language" and "language" (discourse) by offering a combined, complex approach to translation.