Translation Studies Research

The Center for Translation Studies conducts cutting-edge research in the field of cultural and cross-cultural communication, in developing the methodologies derived from the art and craft of translation as an innovative paradigm to revitalize the interpretation of verbal, visual, and musical texts and the study of the humanities.  Furthermore, the research includes the design and building of databases of writers and their translators and the collaboration with other literary associations and centers throughout the world; the development of new models for the reviewing of works translated into English; and the relation of translation to new multi-media technology.

The research dimensions in Translation Studies at The University of Texas at Dallas represent a rigorous and non-traditional investigation into new methods of interpreting literary texts, with the understanding that these methods can also be transferred to the interpretation of visual and musical texts.

All research into the interpretive act of translation has to respond to the following questions:

• What specific procedures of research have to be initiated in order to find possible solutions to the problems posed by the text?
• How does a translator establish an interpretive perspective vis-à-vis a given text?
• How can translation methods be applied not only to the verbal arts but also to the musical and visual arts?

The vitality of translation research resides in its constant effort to solve problems encountered in the transferal of meaning from one culture to another.  This research involves a complex act of scholarly reconstruction and textual interpretation that synthesizes semantic, cultural, aesthetic, and historical factors.

All acts of communication are acts of translation.  Reading itself is an act of translation, and should be seen as a continuous process of reconstruction.  Words gain meanings through their associations with other words, through the link to their cultural and historical past, and through their rhythmic and sonic constructions within a given sentence.  Words by themselves have very loose boundaries.  In most instances, they are too general and do not immediately reflect the specific connotations that a writer might bring to a particular object.  Each reader will have a slightly different image when reading the word "table"--no two people will visualize the shape of a table in the same way.  Before any interpretation can take place, the translator has to visualize all the etymological, cultural, and historical associations that become active in a word within the context of a text.

Our research investigates the ways by which we establish perspectives of interpretation. Take the example of multiple translations of the same text: in pursuing the perspectives of multiple translations, one recognizes that not only is each word in a language a perspective, a way of seeing in and of itself, but also that each language per se builds a larger way of seeing. Translation research sensitizes the reader and scholar to the various perspectives that cultures have established through the specific nature of their language structure and usages.