Some reflections on Romanian translation studies
Affiliations
Faculty of Letters, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University, Bd. Carol I 11, 700506 Iași, Romania
History
Received June 1, 2015
Accepted June 18, 2015
Published July 17, 2015
Key words
translation studies
translation practice
central language
peripheral language
symbolic field
globalization
Motto
“One should never pass over in silence the question of the tongue in which the question of the tongue is raised and into which a discourse on translation is translated”. (Jacques Derrida)
Abstract
In this paper, I decided to examine two “verdicts” on the specificity (or the lack of specificity) of Romanian translation studies in order to define and explain the present situation in this field: one given in the Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, the other in a book on “Romanian translation ideas and meta-ideas”. I believe that the current situation justifies the following hypothesis: the current specific of translation theories in the Romanian space is entailed by the existence of two circuits. The first is academic and international, aiming at including the Romanian research in European directions, by assimilating them more or less. The second is a national circuit—where the positions expressed within the first circuit penetrate indirectly, through “central” languages—and it manifests itself as selective and elective affinities between the two; their interaction is sporadic and it occurs mainly through other languages, not through an interiorization process related to the language of the Romanian source space.
Copyright
© 2015 The Authors. Publishing rights belong to the Journal. The article is freely accessible under the terms and conditions of the CC-BY Open Access licence.