A tale of two Skopos theories: (Re-)siting translation theory
Conceptual theories are generally understood as more or less static models that provide an argumentative basis for a scholar’s work. They present their intellectual genealogies through citation and referencing by which they are connected to existing works. The purpose of this article is to promote an alternative understanding, namely, that theories be treated as historical phenomena, which are influenced by space and time and are therefore constantly changing. Using the theoretical works of Hans J. Vermeer and Andrei V. Fedorov as examples, the article will trace their respective handling of secondary sources, their roots, and connect them to the subsequent circulation of these theories, their routes. In so doing, we suggest a more complex and unpredictable relationship between the roots and routes of theoretical models.
Publication history
Table of contents
- Abstract
- Keywords
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Siting translation theory
- 3.The genealogy of Vermeer’s Skopos Theory, or when roots follow routes
- 4.The genealogy of Soviet Skopos Theory, or political re-routing
- 5.Conclusion
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Siting translation theory
- 3.The genealogy of Vermeer’s Skopos Theory, or when roots follow routes
- 4.The genealogy of Soviet Skopos Theory, or political re-routing
- 5.Conclusion
- Notes
- Funding
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Address for correspondence
1.Introduction
From a marketing perspective, Skopos Theory has been one of the great success stories of post-World War II Translation Studies. Its origin story is uncritically replicated in the scholarly literature in a fairly standard formulation. For example: “In translation studies, skopos theory was defined in the late 1970s by Hans Vermeer (see notably Vermeer, 1978 1978 “Ein Rahmen für eine allgemeine Translationstheorie [A framework for a general theory of translation].” Lebende Sprachen [Living languages] 23: 99–102. ), expanded in the 1980s with contributions by Katharina Reiss (Reiss and Vermeer, 1984Reiss, Katharina, and Hans J. Vermeer 1984 Grundlegung einer allgemeinen Translationstheorie [Foundation of a general theory of translation]. Tübingen: Niemeyer. , 2013 2013 Towards a General Theory of Translational Action: Skopos Theory Explained [orig. Grundlegung einer allgemeinen Translationstheorie]. Translated by Christiane Nord. Manchester: St. Jerome.)” (Collombat 2017Collombat, Isabelle 2017 “Skopos Theory as an Extension of Rhetoric.” Poroi 13 (1): 1–10. , 1), or “Skopos is the Greek word for ‘aim’ or ‘purpose’ and was introduced into translation theory in the 1970s by Hans J. Vermeer as a technical term for the purpose of a translation and of the action of translating” (Du 2012Du, Xiaoyan 2012 “A Brief Introduction of Skopos Theory.” Theory and Practice in Language Studies 2 (10): 2189–2193. , 2189). This pithy narrative has been further consolidated in the many tertiary handbooks and encyclopedias that have appeared over the last twenty-five years. Skopos Theory was granted its own entry in Baker and Saldanha’s (2001)Baker, Mona, and Gabriela Saldanha eds. 2001 Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. London: Routledge. Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (Schäffner 2001Schäffner, Christina 2001 “Skopos Theory.” In Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, edited by Mona Baker and Gabriela Saldanha, 235–238. London: Routledge.), its own section in Munday’s (2001Munday, Jeremy 2001 Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and Applications. London: Routledge., 78–81) Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and Applications, and today Skopos Theory has its own Wikipedia page.
This article seeks to complicate the dominant narrative of Skopos Theory in two ways: first, by tracing the genealogy of the concept in Vermeer’s thinking, that is, in the context of post-World War II West Germany, focusing not so much on the changes or developments to the concept itself, but on the author’s attempts to conceptually re-situate it; and second, by tracing the evolution in the pre-war period of a very similar model in the Soviet context, the genealogy of which was fractured by the political purges of the 1930s. At the same time, the article aims to problematize the very project of establishing or constructing genealogies, insofar as general influences as well as individual sources may be openly acknowledged or repressed for any number of personal, social, and political reasons; that is, they may be overt or covert. Therefore, both the roots and routes of translation theory, as well as the relationship between the two, will be treated as historical phenomena, subject to spatial and temporal influences.
2.Siting translation theory
While in the history of science it is now common not only to situate theoretical positions, culturally and historically, but also to complicate the idea of a fixed and unified origin for those positions, this has not been the case in the field of Translation Studies, where translations of literary and other key cultural texts are routinely sited, to use Niranjana’s (1992)Niranjana, Tejaswini 1992 Siting Translation: History, Post-Structuralism, and the Colonial Context. Berkeley: University of California Press. term, but not the theoretical texts that constitute the conceptual canon of Translation Studies.11.As Niranjana (1992Niranjana, Tejaswini 1992 Siting Translation: History, Post-Structuralism, and the Colonial Context. Berkeley: University of California Press. , 9) argues, “Derrida’s critique of representation, for example, allows us to question the notion of re-presentation and therefore the very notion of an origin or an original that needs to be represented. A representation thus does not represent an ‘original’; rather, it represents that which is always already represented.” Indeed, the persistence and popularity of chronological anthologies of theoretical writings, such as Venuti’s (2000)Venuti, Lawrence ed. 2000 The Translation Studies Reader. 1st ed. New York: Routledge. The Translation Studies Reader, invites a developmental reading of those texts by positing a singular point of origin as key to understanding their significance, as in the case of Vermeer’s Skopos Theory. That is to say, such chronologies are based on the initial publication of the works, not on the historical moment in which they acquired relevance in the field or on their continued evolution. And so, Benjamin’s much-cited essay “The Task of the Translator” is situated in Venuti’s anthology in the 1920s (Benjamin 2000Benjamin, Walter 2000 “The Task of the Translator.” Translated by Harry Zohn. In The Translation Studies Reader, edited by Lawrence Venuti, 15–23. New York: Routledge.), although it did not enter Translation Studies discourse until the late 1960s, when it was translated for the first time into English in 1968, and into French in 1970. Rather than re-presenting the genealogy of translation theory as a progression of discrete origins, we seek to open up that genealogy to discussion and debate, which is arguably the first step in creating a more rhizomatic history of translation discourse (see Arduini and Neergard 2011Arduini, Stefano, and Siri Nergaard 2011 “Translation: A New Paradigm.” Translation: An Interdisciplinary Journal 1: 8–17.; Blumczynski 2016Blumczynski, Piotr 2016 Ubiquitous Translation. Abingdon: Routledge. ; Baer 2020Baer, Brian James 2020 “On Origins: The Mythistory of Translation Studies and the Geopolitics of Knowledge.” The Translator 26 (3): 221–240. ).
The concept of genealogy as a critical methodology goes back mainly to Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault. It was Nietzsche who postulated that all knowledge is deeply influenced by existing power relations and as such is subject to influences in time and space. Foucault, who further developed this concept, used genealogy as a method for writing critical history, exposing the power relations that affect the construction of knowledge, hence his formulation “knowledge/power” (Foucault 1977Foucault, Michel 1977 “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” In Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, edited by Donald F. Bouchard, 113–138. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.). Especially important for our purposes are those works on which a theory claims to be based. Through citation, a new theory is overtly connected to existing works in the field to create or construct its genealogy.
Such genealogies are shaped by the actual location in which they emerge, not only in the general sense of what is sayable, to use Rancière’s (2007)Rancière, Jacques 2007 The Future of the Image [orig. Le Destin des images]. Translated by G. Elliott. London: Verso. concept, but also in the more specific sense of what is citable. While an author’s construction of a genealogy, a theory’s roots, may affect the routes that theory might travel, to invoke Clifford’s (1997)Clifford, James 1997 Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. terms, the establishment of roots may not occur as a single originary event but may materialize over time as theories get refined, debated, and subsequently revised. As such, roots do not represent a single historical event or point of origin manifested in a journal publication or a monograph, but rather may evolve, making it difficult to neatly disentangle roots from routes. In fact, challenging the established roots of a theory, in this case, Skopos Theory, may disrupt the conventional circulation of the concept, enabling new routes to emerge. Therefore, in treating theoretical works as historical phenomena that emerge under certain circumstances, develop over time, and circulate in particular cultural-political spaces, we acknowledge that a theory’s routes often shape its roots as much as its roots shape its routes.
3.The genealogy of Vermeer’s Skopos Theory, or when roots follow routes
As mentioned in Section 2, Skopos Theory is presented in relevant handbooks and encyclopedias as a translation theory originating in the work of Hans J. Vermeer (1930–2010) from the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s in West Germany. In this context, Vermeer’s (1978) 1978 “Ein Rahmen für eine allgemeine Translationstheorie [A framework for a general theory of translation].” Lebende Sprachen [Living languages] 23: 99–102. seminal article titled “Ein Rahmen für eine allgemeine Translationstheorie” ‘A framework for a general theory of translation’ is typically mentioned as the starting point. In this article, Vermeer first posits the skopos, or the purpose of a text, as the decisive factor in its translation, and formulates several skopos-related rules. The year 1984 is often mentioned as the second important moment in the development of Skopos Theory. This was when Vermeer’s initial ideas were elaborated in the monograph entitled Grundlegung einer allgemeinen Translationstheorie ‘Foundation of general translation theory’ (Reiss and Vermeer 1984Reiss, Katharina, and Hans J. Vermeer 1984 Grundlegung einer allgemeinen Translationstheorie [Foundation of a general theory of translation]. Tübingen: Niemeyer. ). The English translation was published in 2013 under the title Towards a General Theory of Translational Action (Reiss and Vermeer 2013 2013 Towards a General Theory of Translational Action: Skopos Theory Explained [orig. Grundlegung einer allgemeinen Translationstheorie]. Translated by Christiane Nord. Manchester: St. Jerome.) and was co-authored with Katharina Reiss.22.All translations from the German, Russian, and Ukrainian are the authors’, unless otherwise indicated. While Reiss proposed a ‘specific theory’ of translation, mainly with respect to different text types that influence how a text is translated, Vermeer worked out a general theory of translation based on his prior ideas. As they write in the introductory chapter (the first part of Grundlegung was written by Vermeer, while the second part was written by Reiss), it was not their aim to “promise a coherent or complete theory. Our aim is to present some aspects in a new light rather than to introduce new viewpoints” (Reiss and Vermeer 2013 2013 Towards a General Theory of Translational Action: Skopos Theory Explained [orig. Grundlegung einer allgemeinen Translationstheorie]. Translated by Christiane Nord. Manchester: St. Jerome., 19). As such, they present their theoretical work not as closed or finished but rather as open to further development.
While this theoretical work contains a wide range of different approaches and cannot be subsumed under a single term, it has nevertheless been understood mainly as a theory focusing on the purpose of a translation, which fundamentally shapes the way a text is translated. According to this narrow characterization of the work, its contribution was to challenge the dominant approach to translation at that time, which posited the source text as the most important consideration for a translation. In the years subsequent to 1984, Skopos Theory became established mainly in German-speaking countries as one of the essential theoretical contributions to a ‘post-linguistics’ approach to the theory and practice of translation before being canonized in international Translation Studies through translation and anthologization in English.
3.1The process of emergence
A closer look at the history of the origins of Skopos Theory, its roots, reveals that its emergence cannot be restricted to a specific historical event; rather, it followed a more complex trajectory. In tracing that trajectory, we begin by examining how Vermeer positioned his theory in relation to existing approaches by citing or not citing certain sources. In this respect, Vermeerʼs publications from 1978 1978 “Ein Rahmen für eine allgemeine Translationstheorie [A framework for a general theory of translation].” Lebende Sprachen [Living languages] 23: 99–102. and 1984 cannot be read as the starting and end points of what later came to be known as Skopos Theory.
Vermeer’s seminal article from 1978 1978 “Ein Rahmen für eine allgemeine Translationstheorie [A framework for a general theory of translation].” Lebende Sprachen [Living languages] 23: 99–102. is based on a lecture he gave at the University of Mainz in the academic year 1976–1977. Due to the relatively short length of the text, Vermeer refers to only a few articles that provide additional details and sources. One of these articles, Vermeer (1976)Vermeer, Hans J. 1976 “Review: ‘La traduzione: Saggi e studi. Trieste: Edizione Lint 1973’.” Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen [Göttingen scholarly adverts] 228: 147–162., is a lengthy review written by Vermeer himself and published in the scientific journal Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen ‘Göttingen scholarly adverts’. In this review of a conference volume titled La traduzione: Saggi e studi ‘Translation: Essays and studies’ (Malmberg 1973Malmberg, Bertil ed. 1973 La traduzione: Saggi e studi [Translation: Essays and studies]. Trieste: Edizioni Lint.), Vermeer elaborates a short theory of translation that is connected to the contributions of the volume. In a footnote he refers to several existing works, including Mounin’s (1963)Mounin, Georges 1963 Problèmes théoretiques de la traduction [Theoretical problems of translation]. Paris: Gallimard. Problèmes théoretiques de la traduction ‘Theoretical problems of translation’, Störig’s (1963)Störig, Hans Joachim 1963 Das Problem des Übersetzens [The problem of translation]. Stuttgart: Goverts. Das Problem des Übersetzens ‘The problem of translation’, Nida’s (1964)Nida, Eugene Albert 1964 Toward a Science of Translating. Leiden: Brill. Towards a Science of Translation, Kade’s (1968)Kade, Otto 1968 Zufall und Gesetzmäßigkeit in der Übersetzung [Coincidence and regularity in translations]. Leipzig: Enzyklopädie. Zufall and Gesetzmäßigkeit in der Übersetzung ‘Coincidence and regularity in translation’, Levý’s Die literarische Übersetzung ‘Literary translation’ (Vermeer cites the German translation from 1969Levý, Jiří 1969 Die literarische Übersetzung [Literary translation]. Translated by Walter Schamschula. Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum-Verlag.), and Koller’s (1972)Koller, Werner 1972 Grundprobleme der Übersetzungstheorie [Basic problems of translation theory]. Bern: Francke. Grundprobleme der Übersetzungstheorie ‘Basic problems of translation theory’. However, the theoretical roots of Vermeer (1978) 1978 “Ein Rahmen für eine allgemeine Translationstheorie [A framework for a general theory of translation].” Lebende Sprachen [Living languages] 23: 99–102. remain sketchy as he mentions only a few works on translation theory and does not connect them to what he describes as his new concept of Skopos Theory.33.The same applies to Vermeer (1979) 1979 “Vom ‘richtigen’ Übersetzen [The ‘right’ way to translate].” Mitteilungsblatt für Dolmetscher und Übersetzer [Newsletter for interpreters and translators] 25 (4): 2–8., another short outline of his initial thoughts, which was mainly aimed at practitioners. He heavily revised and considerably expanded the text for his 1983 collection of articles (Vermeer 1983a 1983a Aufsätze zur Translationstheorie [Essays on translation theory]. Heidelberg: Selbstverlag.).
Five years later, Vermeer (1983a) 1983a Aufsätze zur Translationstheorie [Essays on translation theory]. Heidelberg: Selbstverlag. publishes a collection of several of his own articles titled Aufsätze zur Translationstheorie ‘Essays on translation theory’ in Heidelberg, where he later became Chair Professor of General Translation Studies with Special Reference to Portuguese. Consisting of twelve articles on different aspects of his theoretical approach, the volume represents a comprehensive publication, elaborating on his theoretical thinking related to Skopos Theory in 1978. While the first contribution in this collection is based on a conference presentation from 1972, published two years later, the subsequent chapters are based on published as well as unpublished manuscripts written between 1974 and 1981. In total, these articles cover a time span of nearly ten years and illustrate the development of his theoretical positions. Of importance here is the fact that Vermeer revised several of his initial papers, some because they were initially presentations, others because he felt obliged, as he notes in the introduction, to revise them with respect to their content. Moreover, he states, “in ten years, one’s own views will certainly change. It is to be hoped that some progress will also be evident in the publications presented here. I tried to update them” (Vermeer 1983a 1983a Aufsätze zur Translationstheorie [Essays on translation theory]. Heidelberg: Selbstverlag., i).
In addition to several new formulations, these revisions add important scholarly sources in support of his theory. This is especially clear in the case of his 1978 paper, to which almost twenty sources were added. These scholarly sources mainly concern works from the field of action theory, communication theory, and speech act theory and, as such, were intended to lend conceptual heft and novelty to his theory by connecting it to current intellectual trends outside Translation Studies.
This significant shift in Vermeer’s treatment of secondary sources can be explained by a shift in venue and audience. His 1978 paper was published in Lebende Sprachen ‘Living languages’, a German-based journal aimed primarily at practitioners in the field of translation and interpreting. However, in the later version, Vermeer (1983a) 1983a Aufsätze zur Translationstheorie [Essays on translation theory]. Heidelberg: Selbstverlag. cites extensively from works from other disciplines while making almost no attempt to connect his theory with works from Translation Studies. In this way, Skopos Theory is presented as something without any direct predecessors. The reference to Kade (1968)Kade, Otto 1968 Zufall und Gesetzmäßigkeit in der Übersetzung [Coincidence and regularity in translations]. Leipzig: Enzyklopädie., on terminological issues, remains the only one from Translation Studies.
Vermeer’s initial contribution in 1978 1978 “Ein Rahmen für eine allgemeine Translationstheorie [A framework for a general theory of translation].” Lebende Sprachen [Living languages] 23: 99–102. , as well as its reedition, Vermeer (1983a) 1983a Aufsätze zur Translationstheorie [Essays on translation theory]. Heidelberg: Selbstverlag., took the form of a standard scholarly article and was already limited by the available scope. It was in 1984, when he, together with Reiss, substantially enlarged his initial theory and published it in the Grundlegung (Reiss and Vermeer 1984Reiss, Katharina, and Hans J. Vermeer 1984 Grundlegung einer allgemeinen Translationstheorie [Foundation of a general theory of translation]. Tübingen: Niemeyer. ). Vermeer authored the first part of the work, where he explains Skopos Theory in detail as a general theory of translation, while Reiss was responsible for the second part, where she explains her model of different text types. It is this monograph, together with his article from 1978 1978 “Ein Rahmen für eine allgemeine Translationstheorie [A framework for a general theory of translation].” Lebende Sprachen [Living languages] 23: 99–102. , that is perceived as the pivotal contribution to Skopos Theory.
But Skopos Theory does not stop there. In 1986, Vermeer publishes, again in Heidelberg, the monograph Voraussetzungen für eine Translationstheorie — Einige Kapitel Kultur- und Sprachtheorie ‘Requirements for a theory of translation — some chapters on culture and language theory’ (Vermeer 1986b 1986b Voraussetzungen für eine Translationstheorie — einige Kapitel Kultur-und Sprachtheorie [Requirements for a theory of translation — some chapters on culture and language theory]. Heidelberg: Infinity.). In this work, Vermeer elaborates most fully the theoretical groundwork for his translation theory. At the same time, he revises several of his initial ideas and extends his primary focus with a comprehensive view of cultural action theory. It is within the framework of this work that Vermeer actively merges Holz-Mänttäri’s (1984)Holz-Mänttäri, Justa 1984 Translatorisches Handeln: Theorie und Methode [Translatorial action: Theory and method]. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia. work on translational action with his own theoretical thoughts. One could say that Nord’s decision to translate the title of the 1984 monograph as Towards a General Theory of Translational Action (Reiss and Vermeer 2013 2013 Towards a General Theory of Translational Action: Skopos Theory Explained [orig. Grundlegung einer allgemeinen Translationstheorie]. Translated by Christiane Nord. Manchester: St. Jerome.) was a way to retroactively associate Vermeer’s theory with communication theory as ‘action’ appeared nowhere in the German title.
Vermeer’s (1989b) 1989b Skopos und Translationsauftrag [Skopos and translation brief]. Heidelberg: Abt. Allg. Übersetzungs- u. Dolmetschwiss. d. Inst. für Übersetzen u. Dolmetschen d. Univ. monograph Skopos und Translationsauftrag ‘Skopos and translation brief’ represents another step in the development of Skopos Theory. While this publication does not present new theoretical positions, it was designed to make Skopos Theory clearer and to frame it as a fundamental shift in the field. The fact that it was republished twice (in 1990 and 1992) confirms its canonization in German-speaking academia.
In 1991, his monograph with Reiss was revised and republished.44.A third edition was published in 2010, which, in fact, presents an unchanged print of the edition of 1984 and is only accessible as a digital publication. While the overall text of this edition was not changed, the authors express in an afterword the idea that their theory can and should be developed and extended. In 2006, Vermeer makes another contribution to his Skopos Theory with the monograph Versuch einer Intertheorie der Translation ‘Attempting an intertheory of translation’ (Vermeer 2006 2006 Versuch einer Intertheorie der Translation [Attempting an intertheory of translation]. Berlin: Frank & Timme.), in which he elaborates possible extensions to Skopos Theory. In opening up his theoretical model, Vermeer was clearly aiming to align Skopos Theory with contemporary discourse on translation as an interdiscipline (see Gentzler 2014 2014 “Translation Studies: Pre-Discipline, Discipline, Interdiscipline, and Post-Discipline.” International Journal of Society, Culture and Language 2 (2): 13–24.).
A closer look at the emergence of Skopos Theory reveals that it does not represent a singular historical event but spans the course of more than thirty years. While Vermeer’s first thoughts can be traced back to conference presentations in the early 1970s, his last contribution to Skopos Theory is from 2006 2006 Versuch einer Intertheorie der Translation [Attempting an intertheory of translation]. Berlin: Frank & Timme.. Vermeerʼs works from 1978 1978 “Ein Rahmen für eine allgemeine Translationstheorie [A framework for a general theory of translation].” Lebende Sprachen [Living languages] 23: 99–102. and 1984, which are often mentioned as the foundation texts of Skopos Theory, belong, in fact, to a whole series of publications tackling different aspects of his theory and framed for different audiences and venues.
3.2Theoretical borrowings
In elaborating and formulating Skopos Theory, Vermeer follows two strategies: on the one hand, he cites sources primarily from action theory, speech theory, and communication theory (for more details, see Schäffner 2001Schäffner, Christina 2001 “Skopos Theory.” In Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, edited by Mona Baker and Gabriela Saldanha, 235–238. London: Routledge.). These sources were written for the most part by West German scholars, with only a few sources coming from other countries. When Vermeer does cite literature from Translation Studies, he cites almost exclusively sources written in German and published in Germany. Moreover, these sources come from the immediate vicinity, either from TEXTconTEXT, the journal edited by Vermeer, or from publishing houses based in Heidelberg.
What is of interest here is not the fact that he cites different sources but rather that they are predominantly from outside Translation Studies. Taking a closer look at some of his core publications on Skopos Theory (as he himself states in Vermeer [2000] 2000 “Skopos and Commission in Translational Action.” In The Translation Studies Reader, edited by Lawrence Venuti, 221–232. New York: Routledge., which is a reprint of Vermeer [1989a] 1989a “Skopos and Commission in Translational Action.” In Readings in Translation, edited by Andrew Chesterman, 173–187. Helsinki: Oy Finn Lectura Ab.), we get only a few scattered hints as to his theoretical precursors. While Vermeer explains his theory at length and illustrates it with examples, he almost never refers to comparable theoretical works from Translation Studies. He points to this fact in the foreword to the 1983 collection of his scholarly works, where he states that “the references to the literature reveal how little time I devoted to reading other publications on translation theories, which is actually so important. I hope nobody will imitate this bad example” (Vermeer 1983a 1983a Aufsätze zur Translationstheorie [Essays on translation theory]. Heidelberg: Selbstverlag., i). One reason for this could be the fact that his theoretical contributions were initially addressed to practitioners in the field of translation and interpreting: their main aim was therefore to instruct professional translators and to give them a useful model to shape their decision-making.
It could be this professional orientation that led to the fact that Skopos Theory was for a long time acknowledged mainly in German-speaking countries. Moreover, as mentioned above, the sources he cites are very often from his immediate academic surroundings. This becomes obvious with the second edition of Grundlegung (Reiss and Vermeer 1991). In the newly added afterword, the authors discuss the need to expand their theory. For that they refer to a series of open questions and add twenty-eight sources to update the theoretical and methodological background of the work. But still, only three are in languages other than German while twenty are either from TEXTconTEXT or were published in Heidelberg, basically cutting off Skopos Theory from previous works on the theory of translation.
3.3Circulation beyond its initial place of emergence
How a theory travels and is disseminated beyond its initial place of origin is also of interest in tracing the relationship between roots and routes. As mentioned above, Skopos Theory emerged mainly in the academic environment of Germersheim and Heidelberg. Its subsequent publications in German in German-speaking journals or publishing houses in Germany limited its dissemination to German-speaking countries. During the 1980s, Vermeer published only three short contributions about Skopos Theory in English (Vermeer 1983b 1983b “Translation Theory and Linguistics.” In Näkökohtia kääntämisen tutkumuksesta [Perspectives on the study of translation], edited by Pauli Roinila, Ritva Orfanos, and Sonja Tirkkonen-Condit, 1–10. Joensuu: Korkeakoulu., 1987 1987 “What Does It Mean to Translate?” Indian Journal of Applied Linguistics 13: 25–33., 1989a 1989a “Skopos and Commission in Translational Action.” In Readings in Translation, edited by Andrew Chesterman, 173–187. Helsinki: Oy Finn Lectura Ab.). Generally, his translations or simple contributions beyond German are limited and normally published long after the original work (see e.g. Vermeer 1986a 1986a Esboço de uma teoría da tradução [Outline of a theory of translation]. Porto: Edições Asa. in Portuguese, Reiss and Vermeer 1996 1996 Fundamentos para una teoría funcional de la traducción [Foundations for a functional theory of translation]. Madrid: Ediciones Akal. in Spanish, or Vermeer 2007 2007 “La théorie du skopos et ses possibles développements” [The theory of skopos and its possible developments]. In Traduction spécialisée: pratiques, théories, formations [Specialised translation: Practice, theory and training], edited by Elisabeth Lavault-Olléon, 3–16. Bern: Peter Lang. in French). It is telling that the first lengthy publication in English, Vermeer (1996) 1996 A Skopos Theory of Translation (Some Arguments For and Against). Heidelberg: TEXTconTEXT., appeared only in the second half of the 1990s. That being said, translations do not automatically signify geographical dissemination, as this first lengthy contribution in English (written by Vermeer himself) was published by the publishing house TEXTconTEXT in Heidelberg.
A series of anglophone anthologies, however, contributed greatly to the international distribution of Vermeer’s work. The introduction and eventual canonization of Vermeer and Skopos Theory in international Translation Studies began in the late 1980s with Chesterman’s first English version of the essay “Skopos and Commission in Translation Action” (Vermeer 1989a 1989a “Skopos and Commission in Translational Action.” In Readings in Translation, edited by Andrew Chesterman, 173–187. Helsinki: Oy Finn Lectura Ab.), which Vermeer wrote especially for Chesterman’s (1989)Chesterman, Andrew ed. 1989 Readings in Translation Theory. Helsinki: Oy Finn Lectura Ab. English-language anthology Readings in Translation Theory. While Chesterman’s anthology had a limited circulation, it situated Vermeer among such renowned theorists of translation as Benjamin and Jakobson, greatly enhancing the cultural capital of Vermeer and of Skopos Theory. Moreover, contrary to his earlier publications in German, which were addressed to a more local audience and had more limited citations, Vermeer made sure to cite a wider range of sources in his contribution to Chesterman’s anthology, setting the stage for its canonization in international Translation Studies.
Not long after the publication of Chesterman’s anthology, Vermeer begins to be mentioned in English language works on translation theory, such as Gentzler’s (1993)Gentzler, Edwin ed. 1993 Contemporary Translation Theories. New York: Routledge. collection Contemporary Translation Theories. His increasing prominence in international Translation Studies is reflected in the expanded coverage given to functionalism in general and to Vermeer and Reiss in particular in the second edition of Gentzler’s popular survey. Vermeer’s reception in international Translation Studies accelerated gradually over the course of the 1990s. Nord (1997)Nord, Christiane 1997 Translating as a Purposeful Activity: Functionalist Approaches Explained. Manchester: St. Jerome. published an in-depth discussion of Skopos Theory in the series Translation Theories Explained, which was reprinted in 2001, with a revised edition being released in 2018. This increasing international attention culminated in the inclusion of Chesterman’s translation in Venuti’s popular Translation Studies Reader, which has to date been published in four editions (2000Venuti, Lawrence ed. 2000 The Translation Studies Reader. 1st ed. New York: Routledge. , 2004 ed. 2004 The Translation Studies Reader. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge., 2012 ed. 2012 The Translation Studies Reader. 3rd ed. New York: Routledge., 2021 ed. 2021 The Translation Studies Reader. 4th ed. New York: Routledge. ) — Vermeer’s essay has remained in all four editions. A complete English translation of Reiss and Vermeer’s seminal work was published only in 2013, the translation of which was done by Nord, one of the scholars closely connected to Vermeer and functionalism.
4.The genealogy of Soviet Skopos Theory, or political re-routing
The idea that other scholars elsewhere in the world may have developed concepts related to skopos, or a text’s purpose, arose only recently when Pym and Ayvazyan began to explore the work of Soviet translation scholars, which had been, to their surprise, almost completely ignored in Western histories of the field: “Could we really have ignored the Russians so completely?” (Pym and Ayvazyan 2015Pym, Anthony, and Nune Ayvazyan 2015 “The Case of the Missing Russian Translation Theories.” Translation Studies 8 (3): 321–341. , 1). Among the discoveries made by Pym and Ayvazyan (2015)Pym, Anthony, and Nune Ayvazyan 2015 “The Case of the Missing Russian Translation Theories.” Translation Studies 8 (3): 321–341. in their investigation of Soviet writings on translation were the following: “a translation concept that united foreignization and domestication, that named the priority of purpose, that recognized that how you translate differs according to the type of text you are translating, that developed a catalogue of translation solutions, that posited that translation was a fact of target cultures” (321; our emphasis). The italicized text relates most closely to Skopos Theory. “If all that is true,” Pym and Ayvazyan (2015)Pym, Anthony, and Nune Ayvazyan 2015 “The Case of the Missing Russian Translation Theories.” Translation Studies 8 (3): 321–341. go on to conjecture, “how is it that our more narrowly Western translation theories attribute Skopos Theory to Vermeer, text-type theory to Reiss,” (321) and so on. They go on to trace the Soviet origins of Skopos Theory, or, as they put it, “skopos theory avant la lettre,” to a 1950 article by Sobolev, titled “O mere tochnosti v perevode” ‘On the degree of accuracy in translation’, in which Sobolev posits that the degree of accuracy of a translation will vary “in accordance with ‘the purpose of the translation [tsel’ perevoda], the nature of the start text, and the reader for whom the translation is intended’” (328). They then veer off into a discussion of translation solution types, which they later develop in greater detail in a book chapter, Ayvazyan and Pym (2017)Ayvazyan, Nune, and Anthony Pym 2017 “West Enters East: A Strange Case of Unequal Equivalences in Soviet Translation Theory.” In Going East: Discovering New and Alternative Traditions in Translation Studies, edited by Larisa Schippel and Cornelia Zwischenberger, 221–246. Berlin: Frank & Timme., and in the monograph by Pym (2016)Pym, Anthony 2016 Translation Solutions for Many Languages: Histories of a Flawed Dream. London: Bloomsbury. Translation Solutions for Many Languages, where he also discusses Fedorov’s contribution to what may anachronistically be referred to as Soviet Skopos Theory (45).
In their attempt to trace the roots of Soviet Skopos Theory, however, Pym and Ayvazyan (2015Pym, Anthony, and Nune Ayvazyan 2015 “The Case of the Missing Russian Translation Theories.” Translation Studies 8 (3): 321–341. , 324) quote a passage where Fedorov names the specific text types that align with the dominant purposes (e.g., news reports, documentary and scientific texts, and publicity and artistic or literary works). Fedorov instead begins by describing the three dominant orientations (informational-documentary, agitational-propagandistic, and literary), followed by the specific text types, differentiating among the latter in terms of how they manifest the generic specifications of each orientation. In this way, Fedorov melds text types with Skopos Theory more than two decades before anything comparable arose in the West.
While Pym and Ayvazyan (2015Pym, Anthony, and Nune Ayvazyan 2015 “The Case of the Missing Russian Translation Theories.” Translation Studies 8 (3): 321–341. , 324) follow Fedorov in citing Sobolev (1950)Sobolev, Lev 1950 “O mere tochnosti v perevode [On the measure of accuracy in translation].” In Voprosy teorii i metodiki uchebnogo perevoda [Issues in the theory and method of educational translation], edited by K. Ganshina and I. Karpov, 141–155. Moscow: Nauka. as a major source, they fail to grasp this as a political re-routing of Soviet Skopos Theory in the context of late Stalinism. On the one hand, it was politically expedient for Fedorov to cite Sobolev, who was one of the reviewers of Fedorov’s manuscript. In fact, it was Sobolev who recommended that Fedorov include the chapter on Stalin (Vasserman 2021Vasserman, Elizaveta 2021 Andrei Fedorov’s Theory of Translation and its Place in the History of Translation Studies. PhD diss. University of Leeds., 92), which appears to have contributed to his marginalization in Western Translation Studies. On the other hand, it was politically impossible for Fedorov to cite the scholar who was arguably the major source of his text typology, Dmitrii Sergeevich Usov. Usov was arrested in 1934 and convicted of fascist sympathies for his involvement in the Soviet Russian–German dictionary, under the direction of Gustav Shpet, and would spend almost a decade in the Gulag; he died of a heart attack in 1943, not long after his release. In the early 1950s, Usov was an ‘unperson’ in the Orwellian sense.
The fact that Fedorov could not have cited Usov was in effect a double erasure as Usov traces Soviet text typologies directly to Finkel’s (1929)Finkel, Oleksandr 1929 Teoriia i praktyka perekladu [Theory and practice of translation]. Kharkiv: Derzhavne Vydavnytstvo Ukrainy. Teoriia i praktyka perekladu ‘Theory and practice of translation’, written in Ukrainian. The citation of non-Russian works would become increasingly problematic in the decade preceding and following World War II. Therefore, the rather shallow intellectual roots provided by Fedorov for his theoretical model reflect Soviet political realities, which determined not so much the nature of the theory, in this case, as its overt genealogy.
4.1The process of emergence
If we were to situate the ‘birth’ of Soviet translation theory in 1919 with the publication of the booklet Printsipy khudozhestvennogo perevoda ‘Principles of literary translation’(Chukovskii and Gumilev 1919Chukovskii, Kornei, and Nikolai Gumilev 1919 Printsipy khudozhestvennogo perevoda [Principles of literary translation]. Petrograd: Vsemirnaia Literatura.), then one could say that Soviet theorists acknowledged from the start that translation quality was a relative concept. For example, Chukovskii and Gumilev (1919)Chukovskii, Kornei, and Nikolai Gumilev 1919 Printsipy khudozhestvennogo perevoda [Principles of literary translation]. Petrograd: Vsemirnaia Literatura. asserted different approaches to translation based on the mode of writing: the 1919 edition of Principles was divided into two sections, one on the translation of prose and the other on the translation of poetry; a section on the translation of drama, authored by Fedor Batiushkov, was added to the 1920 edition (Batiushkov, Chukovskii, and Gumilev 1920Batiushkov, Fedor, Kornei Chukovskii, and Nikolai Gumilev 1920 Printsipy khudozhestvennogo perevoda [Principles of literary translation]. Petrograd: World Literature.).
A crucial moment in the delineation of translation approaches based on text types, however, occurs a decade later with the publication of Finkel (1929)Finkel, Oleksandr 1929 Teoriia i praktyka perekladu [Theory and practice of translation]. Kharkiv: Derzhavne Vydavnytstvo Ukrainy., which extends translation theory beyond literary works to include what Finkel terms “non-literary prose”: “Speaking of translations, we have not yet divided them into distinct types. But today, as we approach this problem, we must make a distinction [between the translation of literary and non-literary texts]. The difference in their translation depends on the general linguistic features of these two types of verbal creation” (25–26). Within the category of non-literary prose, he distinguishes between administrative texts and scholarly texts, classifications he adapts from the work of the Swiss linguist Charles Bally, and journalistic texts (publitsystyka), which reflected the enormous interest in the topic of journalistic writing in the Soviet Union of the 1920s.
Finkel’s monograph was released during the First Five-Year Plan (1928–1932), which called for the collectivization of Soviet agriculture and the rapid industrialization of the Soviet economy. This required the translation of Western European scientific and technical texts on a massive scale. That urgency led quite directly to the emergence of the first university-level translation programs in 1930; the first was founded in Kyiv on 31 May 1930, at the Ukrainian Institute of Linguistic Education, and the second was founded on 10 July of that year at the Moscow Institute for New Languages, later to become the Moscow Linguistic University (see Kalnychenko and Kamovnikova 2020Kalnychenko, Oleksandr, and Natalia Kamovnikova 2020 “Teaching Translation: Academic Courses in ‘Translation Theory and Practice’ of the early 1930s.” Visnyk Kharkivskoho natsionalnoho universitetu imeni V.N. Karazina [The journal of V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University], Foreign Philology 91: 147–155.). This resulted in the creation of courses and textbooks, through which Finkel’s tripartite typology of texts was further elaborated and nuanced.
4.2Consolidation and refinement
The first adoption of Finkel’s general typology appears in a syllabus designed by Mykhailo Kalynovych for the course “Methodology of Translation” offered at the Ukrainian Institute of Linguistic Education in the academic year 1932–1933. Module two includes: “Techniques of prosaic non-literary translation, techniques of translating literary prose, techniques of verse translation, the translation of scientific and technical terminology. Business correspondence” (see Kolomiets 2020Kolomiets, Lada 2020 “A Psycholinguistic Analysis of the First Ukrainian Syllabi on General and Special Methodology of Translation by Mykhailo Kalynovych and Mykola Zerov.” East European Journal of Psycholinguistics 7 (2): 135–154. ). The most elaborate and systematic engagement with Finkel’s text typology, however, would appear in three works by Usov, all of which appeared in the early thirties. The first is the syllabus for the course “Theory and Practice of Translation” (1933Usov, Dmitrii 1933 Syllabus for the course Teorii i praktike perevoda . Manuscript. Central State Archives of Literature and Art of Saint Petersburg. F.158 op.2 d.398.), which Usov taught at the Moscow Institute for New Languages. The second is Usov’s (1934b) 1934b Osnovny printsipy perevodcheskoi raboty [Basic principles of translatorial work]. Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe uchebno-pedagogicheskoe izdatel’stvo. textbook Osnovnye printsipy perevodnoi raboty ‘Basic principles of translatorial work’ on the translation of educational texts into and out of the many languages of the Soviet peoples, and the third is the introduction written by Usov (1934a) 1934a “Iz nabliudenii nad tekhnikoi perevoda [From observations on the technique of translation].” In Sbornik tekstov dlia perevoda s nemetskogo iazyka [Collection of texts for translation from the German language], edited by Dmitrii Usov, Zigmund Til’ts, and Al’fred Tuntser, 5–26. Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe uchebno-pedagogicheskoe izdatel’stvo. to the annotated collection of texts for translation from German, co-edited with Zigmund Tsil’ and Al’fred Tuntser, Sbornik tekstov dlia perevodov s nemetskogo. S pril. statei po metodike i tekhnike perevoda. Posobie dlia vysshikh pedagogicheskikh uchebnykh zavedenii ‘Collection of texts for translation from German with an introductory essay on the methods and techniques of translation: A handbook for institutions of higher pedagogical education’.66.Over the course of the 1930s, a series of instructional booklets were created to support the teaching of scientific-technical translation: Morozov (1932–1938)Morozov, Mikhail 1932–1938 Tekhnika perevoda nauchnoi i tekhnicheskoi literatury s angliiskogo iazyka na russkii [Techniques for translating scientific and technical writing from English into Russian]. Issues I–XII. Moscow: Inostrannye Iazyki., Retsker (1934)Retsker, Iakov 1934 Metodika tekhnicheskogo perevoda [Methods of technical translation]. Moscow: NKTP., and Fedorov (1933–1936).
Usov’s syllabus, which was found in Fedorov’s archive, underscoring the close relationship between the two translation scholars, consists of several modules. Module two is titled “Vidy perevodov” ‘Types of translation’ and includes the following topics:
different translation orientations based on the nature of the reproduced text; oral (informational) translation; translation of texts of a documentary nature; translation of scientific-technical writing (guides, instructional handbooks), popular science and mass literature; the translation of socio-political writing; the translation of literary writing; the general concept of verse translation.(1933, 1)
This typology, along with other parts of the syllabus, would appear with only slight alteration in Fedorov’s (1953) 1953 Vvedenie v teoriiu perevoda [Introduction to translation theory]. Moscow: Literatura na inostrannykh iazykakh. Introduction to Translation Theory, discussed below. In the more detailed description of the module that follows, Usov (1933Usov, Dmitrii 1933 Syllabus for the course Teorii i praktike perevoda . Manuscript. Central State Archives of Literature and Art of Saint Petersburg. F.158 op.2 d.398., 3) writes: “The individual taking the course should be presented with examples of basic types of translation (the translation of titles, announcements, documents, scientific-technical texts, textbooks, newspaper articles, socio-political and, finally, literary texts).” Finkel’s (1929)Finkel, Oleksandr 1929 Teoriia i praktyka perekladu [Theory and practice of translation]. Kharkiv: Derzhavne Vydavnytstvo Ukrainy. monograph is listed in the course bibliography with the brief annotation: “Important in this book is Part II, which is specifically dedicated to the translation of administrative, business, scholarly and journalistic prose” (Usov 1933Usov, Dmitrii 1933 Syllabus for the course Teorii i praktike perevoda . Manuscript. Central State Archives of Literature and Art of Saint Petersburg. F.158 op.2 d.398., 7).
Usov’s 1934 textbook presents Finkel’s tripartite typology with some minor adjustments: “Translations into the national languages carry great responsibility: they will be cited like originals, translations will enter the collection of textbooks in the national languages, and the work of translators of scholarly, socio-political and literary writing will be considered in the compilation of dictionaries” (Usov 1934b 1934b Osnovny printsipy perevodcheskoi raboty [Basic principles of translatorial work]. Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe uchebno-pedagogicheskoe izdatel’stvo., 3; our emphasis). He then offers a list of specific text-types or genres: “Translators deal with various originals — translating business papers, instructions, scholarly books on various technological topics, political writings, socio-economic works, newspaper articles (again, of various kinds, from telegraph messages to essays to feuilletons), as well as literary works. And the orientation of the translation cannot be the same [for all these texts]” (5; our emphasis).77.This paragraph appears with only slight revision in Usov’s (1934a) 1934a “Iz nabliudenii nad tekhnikoi perevoda [From observations on the technique of translation].” In Sbornik tekstov dlia perevoda s nemetskogo iazyka [Collection of texts for translation from the German language], edited by Dmitrii Usov, Zigmund Til’ts, and Al’fred Tuntser, 5–26. Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe uchebno-pedagogicheskoe izdatel’stvo. introduction to the collection of German texts for translation, discussed below. Later, in the section titled “Orientations of Translations,” he delineates three major categories: informational, technical, and literary, although he notes later on that socio-economic texts may contain features from all three of the categories (6). Among the thirty-seven works listed in the bibliography is Finkel’s (1929)Finkel, Oleksandr 1929 Teoriia i praktyka perekladu [Theory and practice of translation]. Kharkiv: Derzhavne Vydavnytstvo Ukrainy. monograph, one of three works cited in Ukrainian; the others were by Volodymyr Derzhavin and Grigorii Maifet.
Usov continued to refine and expand Finkel’s typology in the Collection of Texts for Translation from German (1934a 1934a “Iz nabliudenii nad tekhnikoi perevoda [From observations on the technique of translation].” In Sbornik tekstov dlia perevoda s nemetskogo iazyka [Collection of texts for translation from the German language], edited by Dmitrii Usov, Zigmund Til’ts, and Al’fred Tuntser, 5–26. Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe uchebno-pedagogicheskoe izdatel’stvo.), which is organized according to a tri-partite text typology, consisting of literary, socio-economic, and technical texts.88.The category of socio-political texts was the least stable over the course of the 1930s. For example, in issue 10 of his textbook series, Fedorov would refer to it as “obshchestvovedcheskii” ‘social science’ writing (Fedorov 1936 1936 Teoriia i praktika perevoda nemetskoi nauchnoi i tekhnicheskoi literatury na russkii iazyk [Theory and practice of translating German scientific and technical literature into Russian]. Issue X. Moscow: Inostrannye Iazyki., 1) but would return to the term ‘socio-political’ in his 1953 Introduction, making it a subcategory of “agitatsiono-propagandicheskaia literatura” ‘agitational-propagandistic literature’. Morozov (1938Morozov, Mikhail 1932–1938 Tekhnika perevoda nauchnoi i tekhnicheskoi literatury s angliiskogo iazyka na russkii [Techniques for translating scientific and technical writing from English into Russian]. Issues I–XII. Moscow: Inostrannye Iazyki., 4), in his series of pedagogical booklets, would refer to this category as “gazetno-politicheskaia literatura” ‘newspaper-political writing’, while Fedorov (1936 1936 Teoriia i praktika perevoda nemetskoi nauchnoi i tekhnicheskoi literatury na russkii iazyk [Theory and practice of translating German scientific and technical literature into Russian]. Issue X. Moscow: Inostrannye Iazyki., 2) makes “gazetno-publitsisticheskii tekst” ‘newspaper-journalistic texts’ into a subcategory of “obshchestvovedcheskii tekst” ‘social science texts’. (Regarding what seems to be overlapping terms, publitsisticheskii ‘journalistic’ in Russian typically refers to social and political journalism.) The category of literary texts includes classical literature, contemporary bourgeois literature, and contemporary proletarian literature, while the category of socio-political texts is divided into oratory, proclamations, and theoretical and historical articles. Finkel’s (1929)Finkel, Oleksandr 1929 Teoriia i praktyka perekladu [Theory and practice of translation]. Kharkiv: Derzhavne Vydavnytstvo Ukrainy. Theory and Practice of Translation is one of twelve works cited in the bibliography to Usov’s introduction and is the only non-Russian work.
At about the same time, Fedorov was doing for scientific-technical writing what Usov was doing for socio-political writing, namely, attempting “to show their variety, the various subdivisions” (Fedorov 1933Fedorov, Andrei 1933 Teoriia i praktika perevoda nemetskoi nauchnoi i tekhnicheskoi literatury na russkii iazyk [Theory and practice of translating German scientific and technical literature into Russian]. Issue I. Moscow: Inostrannye Iazyki., 8). In his series of pedagogical materials published between 1933 and 1936, Fedorov offers the following typology:
Various types of technical texts
Text from an encyclopedia
Text from a technical handbook
A description of supplies, specifications, catalogues, and advertising (Fedorov 1936 1936 Teoriia i praktika perevoda nemetskoi nauchnoi i tekhnicheskoi literatury na russkii iazyk [Theory and practice of translating German scientific and technical literature into Russian]. Issue X. Moscow: Inostrannye Iazyki., 8–18)
After describing the textual features of supplies, specifications, catalogues, and advertisements, Fedorov focuses on the intended audience of the texts: “The technical texts in this category, despite their differences, can be placed into a single general group. This material has a particular ‘reader’: this material is intended for the consumer of a product from a specific company or factory” (Fedorov 1936 1936 Teoriia i praktika perevoda nemetskoi nauchnoi i tekhnicheskoi literatury na russkii iazyk [Theory and practice of translating German scientific and technical literature into Russian]. Issue X. Moscow: Inostrannye Iazyki., 12). This distinguishes Fedorov’s model from Usov’s and Finkel’s, which differentiated among various approaches to translation based on the nature of the source text, not on its intended audience.99.It should be noted that Fedorov was not the first, however, to turn attention to the role of the reader in shaping a translation. It had been clearly theorized by Alekseev in his Problema liternaturnogo perevoda ‘The problem of literary translation’. In fact, readers appear very early in the article when he defines translation as “the means for acquainting readers with works of foreign writing” (Alekseev 1931Alekseev, Mikhail 1931 Problema liternaturnogo perevoda [The problem of literary translation]. Irkutsk: Irkutsk University Press., 3). Later, in that same section, he is less abstract: “One cannot speak of the aesthetic value of a translation without taking into consideration the circle of readers for whom it was intended: the question of the transfer principles used in the translation of the stylistic, syntactic, and rhythmic particularities of the original is, in its turn, connected to the particularities of the social milieu receiving the translation; its vocabulary, literary and aesthetic features are determined by that social group. And so, the question of how something was translated is transformed into a different one: when, by whom and for whom was it translated? How to translate leads to a different question: for whom and to whom to translate?” (4).
In terms of the concept of skopos, the Russian term tsel’ ‘purpose’ or ‘aim’ appears with increasing frequency in the early thirties. Perhaps the first mention is in the syllabus designed by Kalynovych for his course “Methodology of Translation,” in which the word appears as the title of the first thematic module: “Sut’ i tsel’ perevoda” ‘The essence and purpose of translation’. Tsel’ is used here rather broadly, however, to reflect the Soviet understanding of translation as a ‘weapon in the class struggle’. Fedorov uses the term in a more specific sense, much closer to the way in which Vermeer will use skopos, tying it to the ustanovka, or general ‘orientation’ of a text (i.e., whether it is designed to present information, convince the reader of an argument, or entertain). This is evident in issue 1 of Fedorov’s Theory and Practice of Translating German Scientific and Technical Texts into Russian, where he states in the opening paragraphs:
But first, one must clarify: What purposes [tseli] are a scientific or technical book or article, and in general any specialized text, pursuing?
These purposes [tseli] are to inform [the reader] about theoretical knowledge or practical information, to present factual data, and, moreover, to do so not in any old way, not with the first expressions that pop into your head, but with maximal precision, with maximal clarity, systematically and convincingly. The author of a scientific or technical work does not posit for himself the purpose [tseliu] of affecting the reader with the power of artistic images, the originality and novelty of his language, and so on.(Fedorov 1933Fedorov, Andrei 1933 Teoriia i praktika perevoda nemetskoi nauchnoi i tekhnicheskoi literatury na russkii iazyk [Theory and practice of translating German scientific and technical literature into Russian]. Issue I. Moscow: Inostrannye Iazyki., 1; our emphasis)
Fedorov makes clear that the purpose(s) of the source text will determine the translator’s approach, implying here that the purposes of the target text should align with those of the source text.
Usov, too, begins to use the term tsel’ at about this time. For example, when discussing informational texts in his textbook, he notes: “the translation [of such texts] has one basic purpose [tsel’]: to transfer completely, accurately, and clearly that which is discussed in the text, regardless of the style of the original” (1934b 1934b Osnovny printsipy perevodcheskoi raboty [Basic principles of translatorial work]. Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe uchebno-pedagogicheskoe izdatel’stvo., 6). Later, he will clarify that even in cases where the purpose of the source and target texts is the same, “the same thought may be expressed by a different number of words, and the words may be placed differently and connected to one another in different ways. […] This difference in structure is an important aspect of translation” (7). Here, Usov uses the concept of textual purpose, as Vermeer will do, to authorize formal shifts at the level of both lexicon and structure.
All of this pre-war theorizing on text types and orientations is consolidated in Fedorov’s (1953) 1953 Vvedenie v teoriiu perevoda [Introduction to translation theory]. Moscow: Literatura na inostrannykh iazykakh. Vvedenie v teoriiu perevoda ‘Introduction to translation theory’, which brings together work on literary and non-literary texts in order to create an “obshchaia teoriia perevoda” ‘general theory of translation’; that is, one that would apply to all language pairs and all text types, which he opposes to a “chastnaia teoriia perevoda” ‘partial theory of translation’, one that would apply to only one language pair or text type. Fedorov then goes on to elaborate three super-categories or orientations: informatsiono-dokumental’nyi ‘informational-documentary’, agitatsiono-propagandicheskii ‘agitational-propagandistic’, and khudozhestvennyi ‘literary’. (The last category deals with both prose and poetry, but Fedorov also includes an appendix dedicated entirely to the translation of metrics in verse translation.) Beneath each of these general orientations, he lists specific text types or genres that manifest the general orientation in different ways and to different degrees.
In terms of the overt roots of this model, a close look at Fedorov (1953) 1953 Vvedenie v teoriiu perevoda [Introduction to translation theory]. Moscow: Literatura na inostrannykh iazykakh. reveals a complex system of divergent works that can only partially be explained by the general political situation. References to Marx, Engels, but also to Lenin and Stalin (especially the latter’s Marxism and Problems of Linguistics) are limited to the two chapters dealing with their translatorial activity. As for the general history of translation (theory), Fedorov relates his work not only to eminent Russian predecessors of the nineteenth century, such as Zhukovsky, Pushkin, and Belinsky, but also to German scholars of that time. In addition to Schleiermacher’s 1813Schleiermacher, Friedrich 1838 “Über die verschiedenen Methoden des Übersetzens [On different methods of translating].” In Friedrich Schleiermacher, Sämtliche Werke, Abt. III: Zur Philosophie, Bd. 2, 207–245. Berlin: Reimer. “Ueber die verschiedenen Methoden des Uebersetzens” ‘On different methods of translating” (Schleiermacher 1838Schleiermacher, Friedrich 1838 “Über die verschiedenen Methoden des Übersetzens [On different methods of translating].” In Friedrich Schleiermacher, Sämtliche Werke, Abt. III: Zur Philosophie, Bd. 2, 207–245. Berlin: Reimer.), he cites a number of works that are today largely forgotten: Mommsen’s (1886)Mommsen, Tycho 1886 Die Kunst des Übersetzens fremdsprachlicher Dichtung ins Deutsche [The art of translating foreign poetry into German]. Frankfurt am Main: M. Jügel. Die Kunst des Übersetzens fremdsprachlicher Dichtung ins Deutsche ‘The art of translating foreign poetry into German’, Keller’s (1892)Keller, Julius 1892 Die Grenzen der Übersetzungskunst [Limitations of the art of translation]. Karlsruhe: Braun. Die Grenzen der Übersetzungskunst ‘Limitations of the art of translation’, and Cauer’s (1914)Cauer, Paul 1914 Die Kunst des Übersetzens [The art of translation]. Berlin: Weidmann. Die Kunst des Übersetzens ‘The art of translation’. Although Fedorov rejects most of these sources for asserting the fundamental impossibility of translation, he gives a detailed overview of their work and thus, unlike Vermeer, inscribes his work in a pan-European tradition of translation theory stretching back decades.
In an article from 1952, “Osnovnye voprosy teorii perevoda” ‘Fundamental issues of translation theory’, which appeared in the newly-founded scholarly journal Voprosy Iazykoznaniia, Fedorov (1952) 1952 “Osnovnye voprosy teorii perevoda [Basic issues in the theory of translation].” Voprosy iazykoznaniia 5 (Sep.–Oct.): 3–22. laid the groundwork for his 1953 Vvedenie v teoriiu perevoda ‘Introduction to a theory of translation’ by arguing that linguistics, in particular, comparative stylistics, must serve as the foundation for any general theory of translation, which would apply to a maximally broad variety of textual genres and across language pairs. When citing Sobolev’s (1950)Sobolev, Lev 1950 “O mere tochnosti v perevode [On the measure of accuracy in translation].” In Voprosy teorii i metodiki uchebnogo perevoda [Issues in the theory and method of educational translation], edited by K. Ganshina and I. Karpov, 141–155. Moscow: Nauka. tripartite text typology (literary, journalistic, and business/official) from his article “O mere tochnosti v perevode” ‘On the measure of accuracy in translation’, Fedorov is more critical, noting that Sobolev’s third category might easily be expanded to include scholarly/scientific texts, thus aligning it more closely with pre-war typologies. Fedorov then notes the limitations of Sobolev’s model: “However, while correctly pointing out the different demands on translation made by the different conditions and the different tasks of translation, [Sobolev] does not go further than establishing the fact of these differences and the specifics of translatorial tasks, as well as a general global classification” (Fedorov 1952 1952 “Osnovnye voprosy teorii perevoda [Basic issues in the theory of translation].” Voprosy iazykoznaniia 5 (Sep.–Oct.): 3–22., 9). To refine that classificatory system, Fedorov argues, “scholars must define the generic-stylistic specifics of various types of literary, scientific, and other material from the point of view of those fundamental, specifically linguistic concepts” (9). He offers pre-war precedents for that project in a footnote: Morozov’s textbooks on scientific-technical translation (1932–1935) and his own (1937–1941), unable to mention the contributions of Finkel and Usov.
4.3Circulation beyond its initial place of emergence
Excerpts from Fedorov’s (1953) 1953 Vvedenie v teoriiu perevoda [Introduction to translation theory]. Moscow: Literatura na inostrannykh iazykakh. Introduction to Translation Theory were translated almost immediately into Chinese. According to the translator’s preface in the 1955 book version, the first, fifth, and sixth chapters were published in 1954, in issue 9 of the journal 俄文教学 e wen jiao xue ‘Russian teaching’ (the journal’s Russian title was Russkii iazyk, or ‘the Russian language’), while the third chapter was published that same year in the journal 翻译通讯 fan yi tong xun ‘Translation bulletin’ (Fedorov 1955 1955 翻译理论概要 [Introduction to translation theory]. Shanghai: Zhonghua Book Company., 4). A separate book edition, Fedorov (1955) 1955 翻译理论概要 [Introduction to translation theory]. Shanghai: Zhonghua Book Company., was published by Zhonghua Book Company in Shanghai in June 1955 in a print run of 4500 copies. Chapter 8, however, which contained Fedorov’s text typology, was not translated. As the translators of the book-length version explain:
Fedorov’s Introduction to Translation Theory is comprised of eight chapters, but this translated Chinese version only includes the first six chapters. The translators argue that the first six chapters benefit translation practitioners and translation pedagogy in China, so they are translated for reference. The seventh and the eighth chapters in the original cite translation examples between English, German, French and Russian when the author discusses translation practice, but these examples are difficult to translate into Chinese. The translators, therefore, have omitted the two chapters.(Li et al. 1955Li, Liu, Cheng Deng, Shangqian Li, Huapeng Zhang, Ming Gao, Benyi Sun, Yun Zhou, Shu Wang, Zhaogeng Meng, and Zhenxin Xu 1955 “Translators’ Preface.” In 翻译理论概要 [Introduction to translation theory], by Andrei Fedorov, 4. Shanghai: Zhonghua Book Company., 4)1010.Thanks to Yingmei Liu, a doctoral student in Translation Studies at Kent State University, for providing this translation from the Chinese.
Fedorov’s work also circulated in the Soviet bloc countries, but often in editions dealing with the relevant language pair.1111.That being said, many scholars in the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc read Russian and so Fedorov’s work appears in citations in the work of the East German scholar Otto Kade, the Czech scholar Jiří Levý, and even in the dissertation of the Israeli scholar Itamar Even Zohar (1971)Even-Zohar, Itamar 1971 Introduction to a Theory of Literary Translation. PhD diss. University of Tel Aviv.. This, however, did little to broaden the circulation of Fedorov’s work as the works in which he was cited were not widely translated outside Eastern Europe. Levý’s (1963) Art of Translation was translated into German in 1969, into Russian in 1974 1974 Iskusstvo perevoda [Art of translation]. Translated by Vladimir Rossel. Moscow: Progress., but an English translation was published only in 2011 2011 The Art of Translation. Translated by Patrick Corness. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ; there is still no French translation. Even-Zohar’s dissertation was never translated from the Hebrew.
Until recently, neither Finkel’s (1929)Finkel, Oleksandr 1929 Teoriia i praktyka perekladu [Theory and practice of translation]. Kharkiv: Derzhavne Vydavnytstvo Ukrainy. Theory and Practice of Translation nor Fedorov’s (1953) 1953 Vvedenie v teoriiu perevoda [Introduction to translation theory]. Moscow: Literatura na inostrannykh iazykakh. Introduction to Translation Theory was published in a Western European language. A French translation of Fedorov’s Introduction was done at the Free University of Brussels in the 1960s but was never published and is still difficult to access. It is hard to say exactly why. In general, little Soviet scholarship was translated in Western European countries. More specifically, the chapter on Stalin in Fedorov’s Introduction may have doomed the chances of a translation in the Cold War period, as suggested by the West German scholar Hans Joachim Störig, who omitted the work of Fedorov and other Soviet scholars in his 1953 anthology, noting: “Fedorov’s theoretical approach is fundamentally based in Stalin’s pronouncements on linguistics and should these days hardly be of any significance in the Soviet Union itself (1953 1953 Vvedenie v teoriiu perevoda [Introduction to translation theory]. Moscow: Literatura na inostrannykh iazykakh., 384)” (cited in Pym and Ayvazyan 2015Pym, Anthony, and Nune Ayvazyan 2015 “The Case of the Missing Russian Translation Theories.” Translation Studies 8 (3): 321–341. , 333).1212.For a revisionist reading of Fedorov’s Stalin chapter, see Baer (2021) 2021 “How to Read Soviet Translation Theory.” In Fedorov’s Introduction to Translation Theory (orig. Vvedenie v teoriiu perevoda), edited by Brian James Baer, translated by Brian James Baer and Ryan Green, ix–xxxviii. Abingdon: Routledge. and Vasserman (2021)Vasserman, Elizaveta 2021 Andrei Fedorov’s Theory of Translation and its Place in the History of Translation Studies. PhD diss. University of Leeds.. To this day, Fedorov’s work has not been included in any of the now numerous anglophone Translation Studies anthologies and readers and, until very recently, was not mentioned in the field’s many encyclopedias and handbooks, although the works of his émigré contemporaries, Roman Jakobson and Vladimir Nabokov, are among the most frequently anthologized. In fact, Fedorov’s (1927) seminal article, “The Problem of Verse Translation,” was published in English only in 1973 and in a journal of linguistics.
It should be noted that the publication of the first English translation of Fedorov’s Introduction in 2021 has begun to shine a light, albeit rather dim, on Soviet translatorial thought. In fact, Fedorov makes an appearance in Munday’s (2022) 2022 “Translation Theories.” In The Cambridge Handbook of Translation, edited by Kirsten Malmkjaer, 13–33. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. chapter on translation theory that opens the Cambridge Handbook of Translation Studies. As Munday (2022 2022 “Translation Theories.” In The Cambridge Handbook of Translation, edited by Kirsten Malmkjaer, 13–33. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , 25) writes:
Finally, in 2021, Fedorov’s major book appeared in English translation, supported by funding from the European Society for Translation Studies. Fedorov’s work on functional equivalence was a forerunner for theoretical advances in the 1970s and 1980s in Germany (West and East), major centers for translation-based research. The work of Katherina (sic) Reiss and Hans Vermeer was geared towards providing what they explicitly term ‘Foundation of a general theory of Translation’.
Laudable for its attempt to integrate the two traditions, the use of ‘forerunner’ — a term typically attributed to John the Baptist — casts Fedorov as somehow presaging the emergence of Western Skopos Theory and text typologies, and therefore less developed. The genealogies are, however, quite distinct and cannot be accommodated within a single developmental narrative, hence the need for a more rhizomatic approach to traditions of translation theorizing.
5.Conclusion
While this paper addresses repeated calls to integrate the traditions of translation theorizing in Eastern and Western Europe, it also demonstrates that this is no simple task. Because the field of Translation Studies is so dominated by Western European theoretical contributions, we were left to refer to Fedorov’s model anachronistically as ‘Soviet Skopos Theory’. At the same time, the intellectual landscapes in which these models emerged were quite different. While Fedorov’s model was important and was widely incorporated into translation education programs in the Soviet Union, it represented more a consolidation of previous models than a major ‘turn’. Certainly important in the Soviet context, text typologies for translators along with the concept of textual purpose did not play the same role in challenging traditional linguistic, source-oriented models of equivalence as they did in Western Translation Studies as the problem of formal equivalence had been largely overcome in the Soviet Union in the 1920s (Baer 2025 2025 “Birth of a Discipline? Soviet Translation Studies in the 1920s.” Stridon: Journal of Studies in Translation and Interpreting 4 (2): 5–28. ).
That being said, our purpose in exploring this topic was not to establish the primacy of Soviet Skopos Theory but, rather, to demonstrate that the roots and routes of theories are inextricably linked, that roots may be introduced after the fact, and that routes of any theory, but especially in the context of Cold War polarization, are rarely straightforward and predictable. As the history of translation theory becomes increasingly popular as a research topic, we would underscore the importance not only of explaining theories but also of critically siting them, allowing for a more inclusive, rhizomatic approach to accommodate the varied genealogies of translatorial thought.
The contribution of this article to the field of Translation Studies is at once theoretical and applied. On a theoretical level, by mapping the various overt and covert trajectories of certain concepts without consolidating them into a single meta-narrative of the discipline, it models the kind of rhizomatic history of the field that has been advocated for decades. At the same time, it seeks to complicate conceptual historiography by demonstrating how socio-political and cultural contexts may lead to the manufacture or the suppression of genealogies — and not only in authoritarian societies. On a more applied level, this case study, which deals with concepts familiar to most students and researchers in the field of Translation Studies, namely Skopos Theory and text typologies, offers a convenient jumping off point for critical discussions of the history of ideas in courses on translation theory and translation history. Finally, the article makes available material and individuals from the Soviet 1930s that have been, until now, largely lost to history. The long afterlife of political censorship (see Pokorn 2012Pokorn, Nike K. 2012 Post-Socialist Translation Practices: Ideological Struggle in Children’s Literature. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ) has consigned the life and legacy of Usov to oblivion, even in his native Russia, where to this day he is unmentioned in the many available textbooks on translation theory and practice. And while we acknowledge that no history can ever be complete or final, the historical record can be augmented, laying down avenues for future research and debate.
Funding
Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with University of Graz.