Constructing a Sociology of Translation.pdf

12 Mirella Agorni“translated” in methodological terms by referring to the opposition between whatcan be broadly described as quantitative or descriptive models (focusing on patternsor regularities) and qualitative or explanatory approaches (focusing on thecontingent dimension of translation and the creativity of the human translator)(see Crisafulli 2002).It is essential not to confuse the distinction between descriptive and explanatorymodels with the well-known polemics opposing linguistic vs. cultural/literaryapproaches to translation studies, so often discussed by scholars such as MonaBaker (1996, 2001) and Lawrence Venuti (1998), for example. The dichotomyexplored by this article (descriptive vs. explanatory approaches) is not so muchtheoretical as methodological, and in some cases it can be found within one andthe same theory of translation. It is the case of Gideon Toury’s theoretical model,which is concerned, on the one hand, with the definition of translation normsand laws (here the emphasis is obviously on the discovery of regularities), while,on the other, it aims at formulating explanatory hypothesis, in order to investigatethe cultural role of translation (1995: 53).From a strictly methodological point of view, however, it seems possible todraw a distinction between descriptive translation approaches that emphasiseneutrality and objectivity in research (see for example Baker’s work on the universalsof translation 1993 and 1995, or Toury’s insistence on norms 1995), asopposed to those highlighting issues such as translators’ agency and choices, andquestions of power and ideology (Bassnett and Lefevere 1998; Venuti 1995; CalzadaPérez 2003; Tymoczko and Gentzler 2002; etc.).In a paper that aims at a reassessment of the descriptive paradigm in translationstudies, Edoardo Crisafulli (2002) argues that the opposition amongst thekind of approaches which have just been described corresponds to a basic distinctionbetween empirical and hermeneutic research methods. In his opinion, however,such a distinction is more apparent than real, as all descriptive frameworksnecessarily depend on acts of interpretation.Even in the case of one of the most explicit empirical models of research intranslation, based on quantitative linguistic methods, that is the corpus-basedapproach to translation, it is impossible to draw a clear-cut distinction betweendescription and interpretation. Dorothy Kenny has amply demonstrated that thevery design of corpora is to be considered as an act of interpretation. As she putsit, the criteria governing the compilation of a corpus “will inevitably affect whatthe observer will notice” (Kenny 2001: 70).And yet the corpus-based model has something to say to all those interestedin the dilemma between quantitative or descriptive models and qualitative or explanatoryapproaches to translation. Kenny herself is working on such an issue ascreativity by using tools which would seem more appropriate for the investigation