Text and translation: the role of theme and information

Abstract

Our understanding of text contributes to our grasp of the principles of translation, and translation, in turn, can be a powerful tool for elucidating the nature of text. Translation, if it is to capture the full meaning of a text, must take into account every thread of implication, with its relative weight understood both within the message itself and, beyond that, against the backdrop of the entire tapestry of communicative systems in the source language. And then, once all the nuances have been grasped, each shading of the message must thereupon be recaptured in a totally different set of systems with all proportions kept. So daunting indeed is this task that translation has been called "probably the most complex type of event yet produced in the evolution of the cosmos" (Richards 1953:250).