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Gideon Toury’s notion of acceptability and its interpretations

구하나 1 YI, Yeong-Houn 1

1고려대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Unlike its opposing concept, “adequacy”, “acceptability” is a concept that was first defined in translation studies by Gideon Toury. Here, adequacy can be connected with the source text (ST) whereas acceptability may be related to the target text (TT). We can therefore consider these concepts as a binary concept of translation studies, along with ‘overt vs. covert’, ‘sourcier vs. cibliste’, ‘foreignizing vs. domesticating’, etc. On the one hand, the notion of acceptability has been criticized by Palma Zlateva, Andrew Chesterman and Theo Hermans because of its ambiguity. On the other, this concept is interpreted differently by Mathieu Guidère, Malcolm Williams, and Beatriz Rodríguez Rodríguez in the Occident, and by Sang-Won Lee, Hyunju Jeon, and the Research Group of Korea University for the Evaluation of Korean Translations of French Great Literature. We will argue that these conflicts of interpretation derive mostly from the ambiguity of Toury’s very definition of acceptability. We can therefore say that, as a concept, it is rather problematic and controversial than clear. However, acceptability is one of the main concepts representing the trend of TT-oriented research today, so we must continue to examine it in detail. To find out the reasons for the diversity of interpretation of Toury’s acceptability, it is necessary to study how acceptability is used in other theories in translation studies and in the theories of translation evaluation that make active use of this notion.

Citation status

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