In this essay, Reiss’ function and text type theory and the skopos theory by Hans J. Vermeer will be outlined and discussed in depth to show how translation strategies will change depending not only on the type of text but also depending on its purpose and audience, making reference to the translation procedures put forward by Jean Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet. These theories will also be analysed and evaluated in order to further comprehend how these help us understand how translation strategies change.
The first person to bring up a theory which mainly focused on texts types was Katharina Reiss, who believed that communication takes place principally at text level rather than at the word level. She believed a “functionally equivalent translation needs to be based on a detailed semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic analysis of the source text.” (Venuti 2012:137) [1], suggesting that a successful translation, in her …show more content…
The translation should transmit the aesthetic and replicate the stance put forward by the author in the source text. An example of an expressive text type would be poems, novels and even biographies. For a successful translation of this type of text, a translator may use the method of adaptation as it allows he translator to pass on the message whilst making significant but required changes. For example, if a translator was translating a poem and the goal was for the aesthetic and rhyme theme to be kept, the translator may translate not only according to the meaning of the poem but also according to the rhyming the original author had chosen. Also, for this text type, the procedure of equivalence could be used where there are idioms and metaphors as this method looks for equivalents of the same metaphor in a different