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Current Issues In Language and Society


Volume: 5  Number: 1  Page: 10–32

A Handful of Paragraphs on 'Translation' and 'Norms'
Gideon Toury

The format of paragraphs has been chosen to present questions and a few tentative answers on the theme of translation and norms. The formulation of questions is an important aspect of any research programme, and it has been the basis for descriptiveexplanatory research as well. Translating as an act and as an event is characterised by variability, it is historically, socially and culturally determined, in short, norm-governed. In the paragraphs below, the following issues are discussed: the relationships between social agreements, conventions, and norms; translational norms, acts of translation and translation events, norms and values, norms for translated texts vs. norms for non-translated texts, competing norms. Comments on the reactions to three different Hebrew translations of Hemingway's short story 'The Killers' are presented at the end of the paper.

© Multilingual Matters 1998

© Multilingual Matters 1998

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