1.Translation and interpretation: historical development
Translation, oral or written, is probably as old as the spoken and written words. Even somewhat isolated tribes have contacts with one another in spite of the fact that they speak different languages. As a result, there have always been some bilingual speakers. Three-thousand year old bi-lingual treaties between the Hittites and pharaonic Egypt have been unearthed. Throughout the ages, famous writers have tried their hand at the "art of translating": from Cicero through St Jerome, Maimonide, Dante, Oresna, Rivarol, Leopardi, Goethe, Pope, ChGteaubriand, Gogol, Leconte de Lisle to Gide.
Today, there are some fifty national associations of translators and a good many journals which report on individual experiences in translating. What characterizes these reports, nevertheless, is a singular lack of a solid theoretical foundation. One may possibly ascribe to the author of Language and Thought (1939), the American Wilbur Marshall Urban, the first scientific attempt at examining the philosophical aspect of translation. Linguists, such as Gardiner, Jespersen, Vossler, and Sapir, were consulted by Urban. Already in 1923, Bronislaw Malinowski had given us a remarkable appendix (The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages) to C.K. Ogden's and I.A. Richards's 8th edition of their The Meaning of Meaning. The fundamental problems were at least discussed - total translatability or total (or partial) non-translatability, - and they were argued to be dependent upon either different linguistic structures (linguistic obstacles) or different psycho-socio-ethnological realities (cultural obstacles).
Around the same time, bi-lingual Canada saw the practical need to develop a scientific methodology of translation. Vinay and Darbelmet so attempted in their La linguistique comparTe du frantais et de l'anglais. This was basically a how-to guide for the translator (and, even more so,...