Translation Criticism- Potentials and Limitations

Book excerpt: Katharina Reiss's now classic contribution to Translation Studies, Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Übersetzungskritik: Kategorien und Kriteren für eine sachgerechte Beurteilung von Übersetzungen, first appeared in 1971. This is the first English translation of this major work, allowing students and practitioners of translation in the English-speaking world to make more extensive use of Reiss's pioneering treatment of a central theme in translation: how to develop reliable criteria for the systematic evaluation of translations. Using a wealth of interesting and varied examples, Reiss offers a systematic and illuminating text typology, a pragmatic approach to text analysis, a functional perspective on translation and a hermeneutic view of the translator, thus accounting for some of the most important aspects of the translation process: the text (both source and target versions), the conditions which determine the translator's decisions, and the translator as an individual whose personal interpretation has to be respected by any critic. In the three decades since Katharina Reiss wrote, the terminology of translation studies has evolved on many fronts. Erroll Rhodes' translation strikes an optimal balance between remaining faithful to the original presentation and using terminology that today's reader would generally understand and value.