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Koller, Werner Einfhrung in diebersetzungswissenschaft: 4
thRevised Edition, Wiesbaden,Quelle & eyer, 1992. First
Edition1979.Einfhrung in die bersetzung-swissenschaft Introduction
toTranslation Science is perhaps notthe best book for som eone who
isjust beginning with translationstudies on a formal base. It
presup-poses a knowledge of a specifictranslation theory
vocabulary,which is not always known by alayman in that field.
However, theauthor himself is aware of thetranslation theory
terminology
issue when he says that there arereally moments in which
thestudents are willing to give up onformula and go directly to
thetranslation itself.The book is divided into twochapters
amazingly exactly halfand half): 1. Grundlagen (B asis)and 2.
quivalenz Equival-ence preceded by a p reface to the4th edition and
an introduction.Interesting to note that in the in-troduction
itself, before the au thorexplains the contents of the bookand to
whom it is addressed, hedefines translation as science andexplains
to which fields it is ap-plied (to the process and to theproduct).
In o rder to define transla-tion as a science, similar to the
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esenh s 85autho rs of lingu istic theories thathave to define
linguistics as ascience, he spends a lot of wordingand references
trying to convincethe reader. Still in the introductionKoller is
very specific on thesubjects that are not going to bedealt with
(i.e. translator training,translator com petence, etc.) in hisbook,
wh ich is good so it doesn'tfrustrate expectations.The Grundlagen
chapterdeals mainly w ith the basic probl-ems and extent of
translation itself.It is divided into nine sub-chapters.Althoug h
item 1.5 (Wh at is trans-lation?) seam s to repeat that whatwas
said in the introduction, thequestion of textreprodu ction isvery
well developed there. In item1.6 the author summarizes thevarious
translation models (Cat-ford, Nida/Taber, Oettinger, Wills,Jger,
etc.) mainly criticizingthem. Going through ali thosetheories and
critics someone couldexpect that the author wou ld comeup w ith his
own model of transla-tion, which never really happens.The
Grundlagen chapter endswith a review of E. A. Nida's Toward a
Science of Transla-ting (1964) as a support to hispoint to discuss
linguistic fundam -ental problem s, linguistic transla-tion and
linguistic comm unicativeprincipies.T he second chapter (
quiva-
lenz = Equivalence) is dedicatedto the p rocess of translation
itselfas we can see through J. C. Cat-fords citation at the
beginning: The central problem of transla-tion-practice is that of
finding T Ltranslation equivalents. A centraltask of translation
theory is that ofdefining the nature and conditionsof translation
equivalence. Righ tnext he makes 4 sub-divisonsworth to be referred
to individual-ly. Item 2.1 discusses the problemof translatability
giving the opin-ion of various authors (O. Kade,Bloomfield,
Wandruszka, etc.) andtheir theses about it. He m akes aninteresting
parallel to Sapir-Wh orfHy pothesis (Th e principie of lin-guistic
relativity) . In item 2 .2 therelation of equivalence betweenST and
T T are broadly consideredand exem plified, and the principieof
irreversibility (= U nidirection-ability) is pointed ou t. T he
differ-ent types of equivalence are des-cribed in item 2.3. The way
theauthor does it, through a widerange of examples, too
manyperhaps, m akes the reading/under-standing quite difficult. The
lastitem is mostly dedicated to thedistinction of text types
(literary Xnn-literary) and their implicationon translation.
Related to text type,the chap ter ends, and so does thebook, with
the reviews of threebooks: heorie der literarischen
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386 Resenhasbersetzung (1967) by R. Kloepferand Die literarische
bersetzung.Theorie einer Kunstgattung (1969)about literary
translation, and D iebersetzung naturwissenschaft-licher und
technischer Literatur(1961) by R. W. Jumpelts aboutnon-literary
translations.With the final remark that atranslation is not only a
confront-ation of a source text w ith all thelinguistic and textual
means andpossibilities of a target language,
the author rem inds the reader thathe w anted to introduce him
fintotranslation science. However, theway he does it corresponds
toanother remark that he makes in2.4 .4 that many non-literary
texts,regarding language, style and cont-ent, are by no means
always clear,efficient and economical .
Ina EmmelU S
