The hermeneutic approach in translation

Resumo

The process of translating is an intercultural activity enabling communication among people. The mediation of messages across language boundaries is carried out by translators as individuals with linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Translation Studies therefore develop and describe the translator’s competence. The basic principles of translation which seem to have the status of eternal truths, as Snell-Hornby (1992: 9) put it with reference to Alexander Tytler, “might be identified as follows: mastery of both source and target language, knowledge of the material, ease of style and an understanding of the author’s message.” These principles of translation, serving as an approximation of the translator’s competence, point to the underlying priority in translation, i.e. the necessity of understanding a text prior to proceeding further. How is that understanding possible?