Response by Mossop to the responses to “Invariance orientation: Identifying an object for translation studies”

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Notes

1 A point of information about Scarpa's final comment on legal translation: In my reference to a high court decision, I was thinking of criminal cases. In matters dealt with under British common law in 9 of Canada's 10 provinces, Quebec uses a distinct civil law system ultimately derived from the Napoleonic Code. The existence of two legal systems does create “intercultural” problems for French–English translators. More generally, my statement in the provocation that “my work involved a single culture … which was expressed in both English and French” is an exaggeration for purposes of emphasis. I did in fact have to consider cultural differences here and there in many texts, as in my earlier example of the English translation of the French word national. Another example would be the spelling of Quebec's largest city in a translation from French: Montreal (as is most common in English-speaking Canada) or Montréal (with a foreignizing accent mark indicating that it is a French-speaking city)? Then there is the question of how to translate statements of praise: a press release setting out in French the merits of a person being appointed to a high position will often seem, from an English point of view, to be so excessive in its adulation as to be insincere. English praise tends to be more muted, so variance was required, in the form of omitting or toning down.