ON TARGET'S TARGETS



I
Granted, even in our age of electronic communication, international periodicals are indispensable in bringing the practitioners of a science in closer contact. They have always been - and still are - a major tool for reducing duplication while promoting the exchange of information, opinions and scholarly achievements. The better scholarly periodicals, moreover - those which operate within well-defined programs - do not merely reflect ongoing research. They also direct it in new, often more profitable channels, thus leading to a total re-deployment of the whole discipline.
Although in principle, there is no reason why the study of translation should follow a different pattern, reality has taken another course; for only a handful of periodicals have so far taken the complex bundle of phenomena focussing on translation and t ranslating as their sole object - and approached it under purely theoretical, methodological and/or descriptive-explanatory perspectives. Despite the uncontestable evolution of translation studies into a semi-autonomous (inter-)discipline of its own over the past few decades, most of the journals in the field still embody what amounts to an applied, if not downright practical orientation, and tailor their content to size. Meanwhile, much of the most scientifically significant material goes on being scatte red in non-specific journals pertaining to various other disciplines. On top of all this, very few of the journals devoted to the study of translation are, or even aspire to become genuinely international, a source of considerable reduction of their poten tial impact.
There is an obvious gap here, then, in more ways than one, and it is this niche that TARGET aims to occupy. Moreover, it wishes to do so within a conceptual framework of its own. In one word: our intention is to retain the pluralism inheren t in the various possible approaches to translation while trying to give them, and hence translation studies as a whole, a hierarchical organization. Obviously enough, this kind of framework necessitates a notion of the object which is not merely broad in itself, but which would also offer much greater flexibility than is normally offered. And, indeed, "translation" is regarded here as a general category which only takes on specific contents within particular cultures. In other words, the theoretic al notion adopted here is of a functional nature whereas its manifold realizations, which may vary across cultures as well as within any one of them, are regarded as its context-bound variations.
Let us elaborate a little on this conceptual framework and its implications for TARGET's program as we envisage it.


II
Our starting point is a very simple assumption, namely that translation is basically performed with an eye to introducing into a so-called "target" culture something which is not [yet] there. The act itself is therefore goal-oriented by its very n ature, even though it is no doubt applied to "source" culture facts. Under normal conditions, it is in and by the [prospective] recipient pole that translation is initiated. Semiotically speaking, it is therefore carried out "into -- from" rather than "from -- into". What is more, within cultures, more or less independent "translational paradigms" (subsystems, traditions, histories etc.) often emerge, and the pervasive aspiration to have the target texts incorporated into these acts as a set of con straints on individual acts of translation.
In the simplest case, what is introduced into a culture by means of translation is no more than individual instances of cultural-linguistic behaviour - versions of preexisting utterances (or texts) in other cultures and languages. In more complex cases, however, whole textual models and text-types, even modes of language use, may be imported with a text, or, more commonly, a whole group of texts translated within a certain time span and/or under a similar set of constraints. Nor does the novelty involved in such "importation" merely reflect whatever novelty may be immanent to the source text, either in itself or even vis-à-vis the repertory of the target culture. Rather, it is a matter of what the recipient system accepts / wishes to accept / is willing (or allowed) to accept vs. what it is obliged to reject, or else modify to suit its own requirements.
The needs fulfilled by translations and translating, then, varied as they may be, are determined first and foremost in the target system. This also applies to the extent to which the input of an act of translation is taken as a constraint o n the establishment of a translated text, hence the extent to which the source text's features are indeed retained. The basic rule is simple: inasmuch as a translation is to be acceptable to and accepted in a target culture, whether as a wholly domestic(a ted) utterance or as just "translational", its make-up will be determined largely by the constellation of that culture and the functions the target text is to fulfil in it.
On the face of it, this "rule of acceptability" applies only to the product. In fact, however, it tends to determine the very process of translation, since it also governs the selection of strategies most likely to yield products of the req uired kind. In fact, there is some evidence now that, to some extent, at least, target-oriented constraints of a cultural-semiotic nature indeed shape the cognitive processes involved in individual acts of translation. The same order of priorities seems to apply to ontogenesis too, especially when bilinguals evolve into translators under "natural" conditions, i.e., within society - but out of any schooling system. To be sure, translation programs have long adopted target-oriented principles in their attempt to turn their students into translators. However, more often than not, they have failed to recognize their pronouncements as anything more than directives anchored in their own cultures and gave them a rule-like appearance.
The distinction to be borne in mind is this: the haloed notion of "optimal translation" is just a theoretical figment which only lends itself to speculation. Like the horizon, it is an imaginary line which, the closer it is approached, the more it tends to draw back. More specifically, "optimal translation" is the projection of an utterance in language/textual tradition/culture A onto language/textual tradition/culture B under the maxim of "invariance under transformation". As against this, translated texts as well as translation solutions, translation relationships, translation processes and strategies are observational facts, which therefore lend themselves to actual study. These facts, in turn, are likely to vary in terms of culture, language, historical period, source- and target-text types and functions, mode of transfer, communication channel and many other factors. There is hardly any single feature which is sine qua non for rendering products, and/or the process es which yield them, as translational entities. To be sure, there is not even a necessary 1:1 relationship between an activity and the functional identity of its product. While, in practice, partial overlappings are often revealed, in principle, the crite ria for the two are independent.
The multiplicity of possible realizations leaves no other choice but regard translation as a cluster of phenomena, the members of which are tied together by family resemblance. The unknown quantity here is not so much what the cluster consi sts of, in any "essentialist" terms, but first and foremost the nature and parameters of the "family ties" themselves. Thus, it is not a mere typology that is at stake, elaborate as it may be, but the functional nature of the notion of translation and its possible realizations; and it is the basic target orientation of the latter which accounts for our choice of TARGET as the name of a journal which adopts such a notion as its starting point.


III
Like any object "in the world", translation can of course be approached from any number of angles, within any number of conceptual frameworks, several of which may well entail scientific aspirations. Still, it would be an illusion to assume that a ll approaches, even all possible "sciences of translation", indeed apply to one and the same kind of object. In point of fact, they are equipped to deal with very different things:

- processes vs. products;
- human vs. electronic processes;
- individual, or cognitive vs. social, cultural, cultural-semiotic (etc.) processes and activities which are recognized as translational;
- translational products as functional entities within a target system vs. representations of source system entities;
- translations-as-representations on the textual (or text-linguistic) vs. other (whether communicative or linguistic) levels;

and many more, all of them diverse aspects of the same complex phenomenon. As such, they are no doubt interconnected, many even partly overlapping, but they can never coincide in full. Nor can the conceptual frameworks, or theories, d esigned to tackle them. It is mainly this last fact which should be realized by the proponents of the different approaches to translation, if we wish translation studies as an overall discipline to generate a dialogue, rather than a mere conversation betw een partners who are deaf to each other. And a framework for true and (hopefully) fruitful dialogue is precisely what TARGET wishes to supply. A platform, mind you, not an arena.
To be sure, none of the partial approaches to translation is initially devoid of legitimacy, nor does its legitimation have anything to do with the aspect(s) it applies to: none of those is any more (or any less) privileged than any other. Rather, the le gitimacy of an approach is determined solely by its capacity to pursue the goals it has set for itself, and, to the extent that these approaches also comply with accepted criteria of scientific appropriateness, there should be no problem in retaining each and every one of them within translation studies. One thing is clear, though: no single partial theory can hope to do justice to the full range of that "family" of phenomena which is regarded as falling under "translation" within a particular culture, mu ch less so across cultures, in time or space.
Nor does the answer lie in the detached application of a mere series of more or less complementary theories, all allegedly on a par with each other. Rather, the interrelationships, even interdependencies of all factors which have a role to play in translation, process and product alike, should be explored towards the establishment of a hierarchically ordered program where every partial theory, along with the aspect(s) of the object it applies to, will be assigned its proper position vis-à-vis all the rest. This seems to be the only course for translation studies to take, if it is to account for every phenomenon regarded as translational in the world of our experience and to establish general principles for not only explaining, but also [partly] predicting them, as becomes the empirical science which any observational subject-matter deserves.


IV
Translation studies as we see it entails a highly demanding program, then, which we offer as a conceptual framework and a program for TARGET. Thus, the discipline should be able to establish:

(1) all that translation CAN, in principle, BE;

(2) what it actually IS, under certain cultural, communicational, linguistic and other definable circumstances, and WHY it is realized the way it is; and

(3) what it is LIKELY TO BE, under this or that set of conditions - cultural, linguistic, text-typological, textual, social, psychological, etc.

(1) is of basic theoretical significance whereas (2) is clearly a matter of description and explanation. However, only when the initial potentials subsumed under (1) have been modified by factual knowledge, accumulated in a series of field studies, will ample grounds have been established for making predictions. In this vein, (3) reflects theory again, only in a higher, more elaborate form, namely a conditioned, or probabilistic one. This, in fact, we pose as the ultimate goal of translation studies, and it is mainly towards the attainment of this goal that we would like TARGET to contribute: a gradual progression towards the establishment of a coherent set of laws of the form "if X, then the greater/the smaller the likelihood that Y". This, in turn, will make possible the performance of more refined descriptive-explanatory studies still, towards an ever better understanding of the ways translation and translators, as individuals and members of societal groups alike, manoeuvre within the various constraints imposed on them.

This kind of discipline is also bound to make possible the elaboration of applied extensions that are more "realistic" (in the sense of reflecting reality as well as their chances of being achieved), not least among them translation didactics.

In our opinion, translation schools are ready for such a change. Strongholds of traditionalism of old, they seem to have opened up now, not only to the role of theory and methodology in translator training, from the point of view of both teacher and student, but also to new, pluralistic views as to what translation is and how translators could be trained to realize its many faces.


V
In brief, TARGET will orient itself towards the CONTEXTUALIZATION OF TRANSLATION. It will focus on the interdependencies between the position and role of translated texts and translational behaviour in culture, the norms that determine their appropriateness and govern their establishment, and the modes of executing translation under various circumstances. Within this general framework, TARGET will publish original contributions of a theoretical and methodological nature as well as descriptive-explanatory studies into translation problems and/or corpora of any kind, in any culture and language, including studies that are empirical, or even experimental in nature. The various applications and extensions of translation studies (e.g. implications for translation policy, translation criticism and translation teaching) will not be excluded either, as long as they are compatible with the general orientation of the journal. Occasional theme numbers are also planned, in the hope that they will inspire not merely the writing of new articles, but the execution of new kinds of research as well, in all branches of translation studies.

In addition to full-fledged studies, TARGET will also bring review articles, book reviews, interim reports on ongoing research projects, dissertation abstracts and information of various other kinds. The possibility of supplementing the journal with a series of Beihefte of a monographic nature is also being considered. In the first years, every volume will comprise two issues of about 120 pages each. If possible and justified, the scope and/or frequency of publication will then be increased. As a manifestation of TARGET's international aspirations, a multilingual policy has been adopted. At first, mainly articles in English, French and German will be published, but other languages may well be added at a later stage.
Along with translation studies in and for itself, the study of translation will probably go on serving as a kind of a "laboratory" for several of the sciences of man, a field where certain types of hypotheses can better be tested than practically anywhere else. The practitioners of these disciplines (e.g. comparative literature, contrastive textology, contrastive linguistics, second language acquisition studies, cultural studies, anthropology, semiotics of culture, etc.) are therefore bound to become involved in a periodical like TARGET, not as mere "customers" but - on occasion - as contributors too.
We are on to quite an adventure, we know; and we invite all interested parties to join us in it.
The Editors