Die bepaling van norme van tekstualiteit by vertaling

M.A. (Applied Linguistics)The debate on the nature and purpose of. translation, involving two broad schools of thought, dates back to classical thinkers such as Cicero and Horace, and has 'continued into modern times. The one school holds that the translator's prime concern is fidelity to the source text, the other that it is to focus on reader response in the target language. The proponents of both schools of thought are strongly prescriptive in their views, and in the literature normative pronouncements on the issues abound. More recently, some modern thinkers, Gideon Toury in particular, have argued for a non-prescriptive, descriptive approach to translation studies in order to broaden the explanatory force of the discipline. It is argued that descriptive studies alone can provide the factual basis for a systematic, theoretical account of the nature and function of translation. The present study attempts to provide such a descriptive account of the norms of textuality employed in the translation into English of tutorial matter at the Technikon RSA, an institution offering technikon training through distance education. Four norms of textuality are described: cohesion, clarity, conciseness and correctness, and the study attempts to show that the application of these norms is essential to the writing of translations that are fully acceptable. to the English-speaking reader. In chapter one the objective of the study is explained and primary concepts such as text, textuality and norms are discussed and defined. Chapter two deals with the notion of the text as a communicative occurrence, a speech act occurring in a communicative situation. Various types of texts are described and the referential text, which is the focus of this study, is defined and illustrated with examples. Chapter three examines the role of the translator as reader of the source