Friday, 16 September 2016

Some translators try to be as explicit or open about their procedures as possible. We cannot assume that everyone will know what a translation is. What is it? How can you recognise one? Gideon Toury suggests that three things are true of a translation. The first is the source text postulate:

The source text postulate claims that: there is another text, in another culture/language, which has both chronological and logical priority over the translation. Not only has such an assumed text presumably preceded the one taken to be its translation, but it is also assumed to have served as a point of departure and as a basis for the latter.

It simply had to come first.