way to translate (since many norms are available), but empirical research can make it
possible to predict success or failure when dominant norms are met or violated.
Chesterman (1999) formulates his compatibilist position as follows:
Statements like “In principle, in authoritative and expressive texts [original
metaphors] should be translated literally” (Newmark 1988: 112), or “translations
should aim to have the same effect on their target readers as the source texts had
on the source readers,” or “translators should translate transgressively, not
fluently”) can be paraphrased approximately like this: “I predict that if translators
do not translate in the way I prescribe, the effect will be that readers will not like
their translations / that the publisher will reject the text / that intercultural relations
will deteriorate” or the like.
In all these ways, the concept of norms has helped bridge some of the gaps between
descriptivism and prescriptivism.
A more methodological problem concerns the way norms can be discovered. A
bottom-up approach might gather together many translations, look for the shifts, and
regard any high-frequency patterning of the shifts as a “norm.” That is a lot of work; it
cannot say very much about why the norms are there; but it might be a valuable
contribution. Alternatively, Toury (1995a) pays special attention to
“pseudotranslations,” understood as texts that are presented as translations but are in
fact original creations. In Hungarian, for example, science fantasy novels are usually
presented as translations from American English, even though they are written straight
in Hungarian, with invented authors, invented biographies, and all the trappings of a
foreign product (Sohár 1999). Such pseudotranslations are found in a wide range of
cultures, with numerous different functions (Santoyo 1984). Their particular interest for
Toury, however, is that they can indicate what a target culture expects translations to be
like, and often how that culture relates to other cultures in terms of prestige. This may
provide a short-cut to the identification and possible explanation of norms.
A more top-down approach to the discovery of norms would start from peri-
textual data such as reviews and critiques, which would tell us about the expectancy
norms involved in the reception of a translation. More highly focused research can
economize resources by concentrating on particular public debates about norms and
norm-breaking, thus identifying and analyzing moments when norms are undergoing
change (cf. Pym 1997). Such an approach helps connect descriptive theory with more
dynamic (and perhaps less systemic) views of cultural history.
The concept of norms has thus helped bring several approaches closer together,
at the same time as the empirical discovery of norms has undoubtedly increased our
historical understanding of the way translations operate. The fundamental concept,
however, is not as clear-cut as it may seem. Consider, for example, the way the German
sociologist Niklas Luhmann (1985) describes legal norms as “counterfactual
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