Text Types and Translation

Abstract

In recent years the concept of "translation product" has been widened to include consideration of cultural differences between source and target languages and the purpose of translated messages. Since text types have been recognised as determiners of the global purpose of a text, recent discussions of translation have also included equivalence of text type as one of the major forms of equivalence to be aimed at. There are, however, well-established activities carried out by professional translators, such as bilingual abstracting, summarizing and gist translation, which does not readily fit into the paradigm of equivalence. In a translation theory which attempts to represent all current professional practices, the concept of equivalence has to be modified to accommodate these types of translation processes and products.