Theo Hermans

Theo Hermans is Professor of Dutch and Comparative Literature at University College London (UCL), where he is Head of the Dutch Department and runs interdisciplinary MA programmes in translation studies and comparative literature. Apart from scholarly publications in Dutch and several poetry translations from Dutch into English and from Spanish into Dutch, he edited The Manipulation of Literature (1985), Second Hand (1985), The Flemish Movement (1992), Crosscultural Transgressions (2002) and Translating Others (2005). His monographs include The Structure of Modernist Poetry (1982) and Translation in Systems (1999). He is currently working on a book called Metatranslation. His main research interests are in theories and histories of translation. He edits the series Translation Theories Explored for St Jerome Publishing (Manchester), acts as Director of the Centre for Intercultural Studies at UCL, and chairs the Executive Board of the International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS).

Abstract of presentation:

Observing Systems, Training, and the Form of Translation

The paper aims to paint a picture of translation as a specific social activity and to reflect on translator training in relation to professional translating.
I begin by outlining a view of translation inspired by Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory. This means elucidating such key concepts as communication, observation, differentiation, code, programme, autopoiesis, operational closure and structural coupling.
Translation is then defined in terms of representation both as proxy and as resemblance, typically in the shape of interlingual re-enactment. The form of translation is what emerges over time as a result of translation-specific intertextuality.
This allows me to describe the translator training institute as internalizing the criteria governing professional translation, but with a difference. The difference concerns issues of observation and second-order observation, and the relation between cognitive and normative expectations.