Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. Vol. 1. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 24)

Péter Ortutay: How to evaluate translation?

Consequently, "the essence, the message of a given literary work is not a series of items which can be enumerated, moreover it is not just a leading thought, a moral lesson that can be hung on the wall, but something much more sophisticated and mysterious than that, so it must be handled with the utmost care" (Hankiss, 1985:157). Secondly, from the point of view of translation it is by no means the same what the form of a given message is. It is obvious that a poem, a verse must by no means be translated into prose, and vice versa, and so on and so forth (for a more detailed analysis see for example Ortutay,1991: 289-295). And is it just István Bart who would not know it! 1.2. What is the situation, however, in the field of an objective translation criticism in countries other than Hungary? The truth is that the overall picture is hardly different at all, although serious efforts have been made to discover, first of all the 'laws' of translation, and then, on the basis of this the criteria defining objectivity in assessment (see, for example Reiss, 1971; House, 1976;Toury, 1993). Most of the scholars investigating the problems of a more objective translation criticism are of the opinion that in case of evaluating the merits and pointing out the flaws of certain translations individual predisposition and a series of groundless impressions are much more relevant and typical than objectively measurable scientific approach. Therefore on the basis of a concerned analysis of the source language text (SLT) and investigating the available translational solutions they recommend a set of criteria which can be applied methodically and systematically. At the same time, however, they also sincerely admit that subjectivity cannot be completely excluded even if all the criteria they have recommended are rigorously taken into consideration, because different readers (translators) will interprete a given text always differently, moreover the reaction of different recipients will also be quite different. After all, says Katharine Reiss, "... any analysis, however concerned it may be to achieve total objectivity, ultimately amounts to interpretation" (1971:107). Consequently "it seems to be unlikely that translation quality assessment can ever be completely objectified in the manner of results of natural science subjects" (House, 1976:64). It is most interesting how Gideon Toury, perhaps 129