Connotative meaning and translation problems

A real translation, as distinct from a translation done as a training exercise, is always produced in response to the specific demands of the person or organization that commissions it: a government department, an international organization, an advertising agency, a publisher, a manufacturing company (see the discussion of skopos in Chapter 4 ). This puts a particular kind of pressure on the translator. We have tried to simulate such demands and pressures in some of the practicals in this course. These exercises are necessarily artificial, but they should make it clear that TTs are purpose-made texts, their manner of formulation heavily influenced, both strategically and in detail, by who and what they are intended for. It is to emphasize this vital point that we are giving an entire chapter to consumer-oriented texts, for the decisive influence of ‘translation-for-a-purpose’ is nowhere more strongly felt than in translating such texts. Of course, all texts are in a certain sense consumer-oriented (or user-oriented). One may assume that every type of text responds to the tastes or demands of a particular audience. In that sense, short stories are consumer-oriented to satisfy readers who enjoy short stories, television soap operas are consumer-oriented to satisfy viewers who like watching soaps, and so forth. The first thing a publisher asks when offered a manuscript is what potential readership there is for the text. The whole question of marketability turns primarily on this kind of consumer orientation.