Pekka Kujamäki

Anna Mauranen

Translation universals is one of the most intriguing and controversial topics in recent translation studies. Can we discover general laws of translation, independent of the particularities of individual translations? Research into this is new: serious empirical work only began in the late nineties. The present volume offers the state of the art on the issue. It includes theoretical discussion on alternative conceptualisations and new distinctions around the basic concepts. Several papers test hypotheses on universals in the light of recent work in different languages, and some suggest new ones emerging from empirical work over the last two to three years. The book contributes to the search for generalities in translation, the methodological solutions available, and presents emerging evidence on the kinds of regularities that large-scale research is bringing forth. On a more practical level, the applicability of the hypotheses and findings to translator education is, as always, a concern for translation studies.

Do They Exist?

Translation Universals

This volume is a collection of articles presented at the conference Translation Studies: Moving In - Moving On in Joensuu, Finland, December 2009. The papers deal with the question of how and under what circumstances target cultures accept or reject concepts, ideas or linguistic features that cross cultural and linguistic borders through translation. The discussions rely on varying empirical data including advertisements, audiovisual translations, encyclopedia as well as translations of literary prose, drama and history texts. As the multiplicity of the data implies, the methodologies used also vary widely from corpus-linguistic methods to analysis of paratexts, and from crosslinguistic analysis of source and target texts to contextualization of target texts in their respective target cultures. The target cultures and languages dealt with in the articles include Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish. Hannu Kemppanen and Pekka Kujam ki are professors in Foreign Languages and Translation Studies at the University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu.Leena Kolehmainen and Esa Penttil work as post-doctoral research fellows at the same department.

Pekka Kujamäki

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