Andrew Chesterman on Skopos theory (part 1 of 3)

Part 1 of a lecture given at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona, Spain) on January 18, 2011
Andrew Chesterman is Professor of Multilingual Communication, Department of General Linguistics, University of Helsinki, Finland. Author of Memes of Translation (1997), Contrastive Functional Analysis (1998), co-author of Can Theory Help Translators? (2002) and The Map. A Beginner's Guide to Doing Research in Translation Studies (2002). He held a Càtedra d'Excel.lencia (Chair of Excellence) at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili in 2011.

[@basselmohd3437]

Hi all,can anyone state the advantages and disadvantages of skopos theory that is why skopos theory thanks in advance to all participants

[@gregpringle1299]

I feel uncomfortable with theories that assume there is a "Translator", a "Client", and a "Reader". This seems too closely tied to pragmatic realities, meaning that "Translation Studies" is concerned with the "translation industry" rather than with translation as a more general activity that might have multifarious goals. How does it deal with people who do translations for their own personal satisfaction, without intending to publish them? There were people who did this in the 18th century -- translating classics as an intellectual or artistic exercise. Translation is a purposeful activity that should not be tied down to the ethics of working with clients and consumers. Clients (or those who commission translations) and consumers are, of course, highly relevant in the real world, but tying a theory of translation to such concrete realities does not seem to capture all possible situations.

[@sebamancu]

I totally agree with you. Please, check on Sergio Viaggio's general theory of interlingual mediation... it goes far beyond Skopos theory, and might be an all-emcompassing way of describing what translating and a translation are...

[@janereed4988]

This would have been better presented with diagrams added