Microsoft Word 05 descriptions doc

system as a network of structures where, ideally, a change in one term implies some 

kind of change in all others. There are actually very few cultural systems where this is 

the case. Most have parts where changes are connected, as in a particular region or 

genre, and others that remain relatively undisturbed. The introduction of a new lexical 

item does not alter the entire language (lexical fields are segmented, and the repertoires 

are mostly open-ended), although a change in tense usage would normally affect all the 

tenses in the language (verb tenses form systems with very few terms). The reigning 

idea, however, was that structures could indeed connect everything to everything, 

giving rise to numerous plans to explain the whole world.  

The basic idea of structuralism went traveling around the West in several 

different guises. Many parts of the humanities were applying elements of the approach. 

In anthropology, the tradition leading from Mauss to Lévi-Strauss had tapped into 

structuralist linguistics; structuralism was in the scientific epistemologies of Bachelard 

and Merleau-Ponty; it would be behind the linguistics of Benveniste and Chomsky (who 

sought its Cartesian connections). Virtually across the humanities, researchers set out to 

study relations between things, in search of hidden principles. Translation Studies was 

no exception. But what would the basic structures of translation look like? Were 

translations in any way necessary for cultural systems? And could there be anything like 

a system of translations?