THE FACULTY OF LETTERS

GUNADARMA UNIVERSITY



7th psychological approach to literature

CRITICAL APPROACHES TO LITERATURE

Described below are nine common critical approaches to the literature.
You will have essay assignments that use several of these. See your Short Guide textbook for additional information.
   
Formalist Criticism: This form of criticism emphasizes the form of the work, with "form" meaning the genre or type of work. This approach regards literature as "a unique form of human knowledge that needs to be examined on its own terms."1 All the elements necessary for understanding the work are contained within the work itself. From the stance of the formalist critic you will look at such elements of a work as form-style, structure, tone, imagery, etc.-that are found within the text. Your primary goal as a formalist critic is to determine how such elements work together with the text's content to shape its effects upon readers.

6th psychological approach to literature

The psychological approach is a unique form of criticism in that it draws upon psychological theories in its interpretation of a text. Linking the psychological and literary worlds bring a kind of scientific aspect into literary criticism. The three branches of psychological criticism that we have discussed in class are Psychoanalytic criticism, trauma and Cognitive criticism.
The first approach that we have discussed was psychoanalytic criticism. According to our Dictionary of Critical Theory, psychoanalysis is, “1) a discipline founded on a procedure for the investigation of mental processes that are otherwise inaccessible because they are unconcious; 2) a therapeutic method for the treatment of neurotic disorders; and 3) a body of psychological data evovling into a new scientific discipline.” Freud believes that society sublimates, or channels its unconscious through the creative process. This is where literature come into play. When criticizing Emily Dickinson’s poetry a psychoanalytic approach can be utilized. Take for example Dickinson’s poem There’s a certain slant of light,:
There’s a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.
Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.
None may teach it anything,
‘Tis the seal, despair,-
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.
When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, ‘t is like the distance
On the look of death.
The psychoanalytic critic would look of the unconscious desires sublimated by Dickinson in her poem. In the psychoanalyst’s mind everyone’s actions are governed by sexual/pleasure seeking motives. Dickinson would have these desires and since they cannot be expressed in society she must sublimate them in her creative outlet, poetry. For example, with Freud’s theories in mind, we might draw the conclusion that Dickinson got a sexual pleasure from pain.
The second approach of psychological criticism discussed in class is trauma. According to Caruth’s article “Trauma and Experience: Introduction”, “…in trauma the greatest confrontation with reality may also occur as an absolute numbing to it, that immediacy, paradoxically enough, may take the form of belatedness.” The affects of trauma on an author can manifest itself in their writing. Say for instance we learned that Emily Dickinson’s mother had killed herself in front her, this traumatic experience would be influential on her writing and we could interpret her poems with this in mind. (Trauma does not stand so much on it’s own as it is linked to psychoanalysis. The unconscious desires, perhaps influenced by trauma, of an author are the true meanings underlying all of their work.)
The third approach of psychological criticism discussed in class is the Cognitive Approach. Whereas the psychoanalytic approach  focused on the author and why they wrote what they wrote, the cognitive approach focuses on the reader and how their mind works while reading literature. This approach explains why humans associate certain mindsets with situations. The process is scientific in nature and draws evidence such as evolutionary findings to support its claim. The cognitive critic would read Dickinson’s poem, There’s a certain slant of light, and focus on what mindsets the reader associates with each line and why they do so. Through an understanding of a cognitive approach on literary works such as Dickinson’s poetry the reader can reach a better understanding of the poem’s intellectual complexity and the logic behind how easily they can follow what is going on in the poems.

5th psychological approach to literature

Symbolizing a Character: A Psychological Approach to Literature

Often times, authors use characters in their novels and stories as symbols. The characters may be symbolic of the tangible as well as the non-tangible. In addition, characters can often be looked at with a psychological approach to literature in order to better determine or understand their symbolic significance. In William Golding's Lord of the Flies, special symbolic significance may be found in the characters, Piggy, Ralph, and Jack. Piggy, the heavy, asthmatic, nearsighted boy, was often teased and ridiculed, however Golding made it obvious to the reader that Piggy was indeed the super ego. Piggy symbolizes all the hate and discrimination in the world. If it was not for Piggy's bizarre appearance, he may have been made ruler of the island, and he certainly was the most suited for the job. He also symbolizes intelligence. He was analogous to sanity and reason. "Piggy's role as a man's reasoning faculties him as a father" (Rosenfield 264). Piggy always used ideal judgment and was the island's only adult-like figure. He demonstrated this at a tribal meeting after the boys nearly burned down the island:
"I got the conch! Just you listen! The first thing we ought to have made was shelters down there by the beach. It wasn't half cold there in the night but the first time Ralph says 'fire' you goes howling and screaming up this here mountain. Like a pack of kids!"
By now they were listening to the tirade.
"How can you expect to be rescued if you don't put first things first and act proper?"
He took off his glasses and made as if to put down the conch; but the sudden motion towards it of most of the older boys changed his mind. He tucked the shell under his arm, and crouched back on a rock.
"Then when you get here you build a bonfire that isn't no use. Now you been and set the whole island on fire. Won't we look funny if the whole island burns up? Cooked fruit, that's what we'll have to eat, and roast pork. And that's nothing to laugh at! You said Ralph was chief and you don't give him time to think. Then when he says something you rush off, like, like-"
He paused for breath, and the fire growled at them.
"And that's not all. Them kids. The little 'uns. Who took any notice of 'em? Who knows how many we got?" Ralph took a sudden step forward (Golding 45).
Then after a brief argument with Jack, he continued:
"--and them little 'uns was wandering about down there where the fire is. How d'you know they aren't still there?"

4th psychological approach to literature

Critical Approaches to Literature

Described below are nine common critical approaches to the literature. Quotations are from X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia’s Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama, Sixth Edition (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), pages 1790-1818.

• Formalist Criticism: This approach regards literature as “a unique form of human knowledge that needs to be examined on its own terms.” All the elements necessary for understanding the work are contained within the work itself. Of particular interest to the formalist critic are the elements of form—style, structure, tone, imagery, etc.—that are found within the text. A primary goal for formalist critics is to determine how such elements work together with the text’s content to shape its effects upon readers.
• Biographical Criticism: This approach “begins with the simple but central insight that literature is written by actual people and that understanding an author’s life can help readers more thoroughly comprehend the work.” Hence, it often affords a practical method by which readers can better understand a text. However, a biographical critic must be careful not to take the biographical facts of a writer’s life too far in criticizing the works of that writer: the biographical critic “focuses on explicating the literary work by using the insight provided by knowledge of the author’s life.... [B]iographical data should amplify the meaning of the text, not drown it out with irrelevant material.”
• Historical Criticism: This approach “seeks to understand a literary work by investigating the social, cultural, and intellectual context that produced it—a context that necessarily includes the artist’s biography and milieu.” A key goal for historical critics is to understand the effect of a literary work upon its original readers.
• Gender Criticism: This approach “examines how sexual identity influences the creation and reception of literary works.” Originally an offshoot of feminist movements, gender criticism today includes a number of approaches, including the so-called “masculinist” approach recently advocated by poet Robert Bly. The bulk of gender criticism, however, is feminist and takes as a central precept that the patriarchal attitudes that have dominated western thought have resulted, consciously or unconsciously, in literature “full of unexamined ‘male-produced’ assumptions.” Feminist criticism attempts to correct this imbalance by analyzing and combatting such attitudes—by questioning, for example, why none of the characters in Shakespeare’s play Othello ever challenge the right of a husband to murder a wife accused of adultery. Other goals of feminist critics include “analyzing how sexual identity influences the reader of a text” and “examin[ing] how the images of men and women in imaginative literature reflect or reject the social forces that have historically kept the sexes from achieving total equality.”
• Psychological Criticism: This approach reflects the effect that modern psychology has had upon both literature and literary criticism. Fundamental figures in psychological criticism include Sigmund Freud, whose “psychoanalytic theories changed our notions of human behavior by exploring new or controversial areas like wish-fulfillment, sexuality, the unconscious, and repression” as well as expanding our understanding of how “language and symbols operate by demonstrating their ability to reflect unconscious fears or desires”; and Carl Jung, whose theories about the unconscious are also a key foundation of Mythological Criticism. Psychological criticism has a number of approaches, but in general, it usually employs one (or more) of three approaches:
  1. An investigation of “the creative process of the artist: what is the nature of literary genius and how does it relate to normal mental functions?”
  2. The psychological study of a particular artist, usually noting how an author’s biographical circumstances affect or influence their motivations and/or behavior.
  3. The analysis of fictional characters using the language and methods of psychology.
• Sociological Criticism: This approach “examines literature in the cultural, economic and political context in which it is written or received,” exploring the relationships between the artist and society. Sometimes it examines the artist’s society to better understand the author’s literary works; other times, it may examine the representation of such societal elements within the literature itself. One influential type of sociological criticism is Marxist criticism, which focuses on the economic and political elements of art, often emphasizing the ideological content of literature; because Marxist criticism often argues that all art is political, either challenging or endorsing (by silence) the status quo, it is frequently evaluative and judgmental, a tendency that “can lead to reductive judgment, as when Soviet critics rated Jack London better than William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Edith Wharton, and Henry James, because he illustrated the principles of class struggle more clearly.” Nonetheless, Marxist criticism “can illuminate political and economic dimensions of literature other approaches overlook.”
• Mythological Criticism: This approach emphasizes “the recurrent universal patterns underlying most literary works.” Combining the insights from anthropology, psychology, history, and comparative religion, mythological criticism “explores the artist’s common humanity by tracing how the individual imagination uses myths and symbols common to different cultures and epochs.” One key concept in mythlogical criticism is the archetype, “a symbol, character, situation, or image that evokes a deep universal response,” which entered literary criticism from Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. According to Jung, all individuals share a “‘collective unconscious,’ a set of primal memories common to the human race, existing below each person’s conscious mind”—often deriving from primordial phenomena such as the sun, moon, fire, night, and blood, archetypes according to Jung “trigger the collective unconscious.” Another critic, Northrop Frye, defined archetypes in a more limited way as “a symbol, usually an image, which recurs often enough in literature to be recognizable as an element of one’s literary experience as a whole.” Regardless of the definition of archetype they use, mythological critics tend to view literary works in the broader context of works sharing a similar pattern.
• Reader-Response Criticism: This approach takes as a fundamental tenet that “literature” exists not as an artifact upon a printed page but as a transaction between the physical text and the mind of a reader. It attempts “to describe what happens in the reader’s mind while interpreting a text” and reflects that reading, like writing, is a creative process. According to reader-response critics, literary texts do not “contain” a meaning; meanings derive only from the act of individual readings. Hence, two different readers may derive completely different interpretations of the same literary text; likewise, a reader who re-reads a work years later may find the work shockingly different. Reader-response criticism, then, emphasizes how “religious, cultural, and social values affect readings; it also overlaps with gender criticism in exploring how men and women read the same text with different assumptions.” Though this approach rejects the notion that a single “correct” reading exists for a literary work, it does not consider all readings permissible: “Each text creates limits to its possible interpretations.”
• Deconstructionist Criticism: This approach “rejects the traditional assumption that language can accurately represent reality.” Deconstructionist critics regard language as a fundamentally unstable medium—the words “tree” or “dog,” for instance, undoubtedly conjure up different mental images for different people—and therefore, because literature is made up of words, literature possesses no fixed, single meaning. According to critic Paul de Man, deconstructionists insist on “the impossibility of making the actual expression coincide with what has to be expressed, of making the actual signs [i.e., words] coincide with what is signified.” As a result, deconstructionist critics tend to emphasize not what is being said but how language is used in a text. The methods of this approach tend to resemble those of formalist criticism, but whereas formalists’ primary goal is to locate unity within a text, “how the diverse elements of a text cohere into meaning,” deconstructionists try to show how the text “deconstructs,” “how it can be broken down ... into mutually irreconcilable positions.” Other goals of deconstructionists include (1) challenging the notion of authors’ “ownership” of texts they create (and their ability to control the meaning of their texts) and (2) focusing on how language is used to achieve power, as when they try to understand how a some interpretations of a literary work come to be regarded as “truth.”

3rd psychological approach to literature

Introduction to Theory of Literature (ENGL 300)

In this lecture, Professor Paul Fry explores Fredric Jameson's seminal work, The Political Unconscious, as an outcropping of Marxist literary criticism and structural theory. Texts such as Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" and Shakespeare's seventy-third sonnet are examined in the context of Jameson's three horizons of underlying interpretive frameworks--the political, the social, and the historical, each carefully explained. The extent to which those frameworks permeate individual thought is addressed in a discussion of Jameson's concept of the "ideologeme." The theorist's work is juxtaposed with the writings of Bakhtin and Levi-Strauss. The lecture concludes by revisiting the children's story Tony the Tow Truck, upon which Jameson's theory of literature is mapped.

2nd psychological approach to literature
Taken from A Handbook of Critical Approaches ot Literature, Fouth ed. Guren, et al

The Psychological Approach: Freud Aim of Psychological Approach: Provide many profound clues toward solving a work’s thematic and symbolic mysteries Abuses and Misunderstandings of the Psychological Approach: In the general sense of the word, nothing new about psychological approach.  Used as early as the 4th century by Aristotle. During the twentieth century, psychological criticism has come to be associated with the psychoanalytical theories of Sigmund Freud and his followers.  This association has resulted in most of the abuses and misunderstandings of this approach. Abuses results from an excess of enthusiasm, which has manifested several ways: Advocates push their critical theses to hard, forcing the psychoanalytical theory at expense of other considerations The literary criticism of the psychoanalytical extremists degenerated into a special occultism with its own mystique and jargon used specifically for the in-group. Results in widespread mistrust of the psychological approach in analyzing literature Freud’s Theories: Freud emphasized the unconscious aspects of the human psyche Most of the individual’s mental processes are unconscious All human behavior is motivated ultimately by sexuality (However, some of Freud’s own disciples have rejected this, including Jung and Adler) Freud assigned mental processes to three psychic zones: The id: Reservoir of libido, the primary source of all physic energy. The id functions to fulfill the pleasure principle. The id has no consciousness or semblance of rational order; characterized by a tremendous and amorphous vitality. Only has an impulse to obtain satisfaction for the instinctual needs in accordance with pleasure In short, the id is the source of all aggression and desires Two agencies to regulate the id: The ego: Protects the individual Rational  governing agent of the psyche Lacks the strong vitality of the id, regulates the instinctual drives of the id so that they may be in released in nondestructive behavioral patterns Ego comprises what we think of as the conscious mind The superego: Primarily functions to protect society Largely unconscious, superego is the moral censoring agency, the repository of conscience and pride Serves to inhibit or repress the id, to block off and thrust back into the unconscious those impulses toward pleasure that society regards as unacceptable (like overt aggression, sexual passion, and the Oedipal Instinct) Examples of the Psychological Approach in practice: The Oedipus Complex in Hamlet (Oedipus Complex is when a boy is sexually attracted to his mother) Rebellion against the father in Huckleberry Finn Id versus Superego in the short story “Young Goodman Brown” The consequences of sexual repression in The Turn of the Screw Love and Death in the short story “Sick Rose” Sexual Imagery in the poem “To His Coy Mistress” (Most often use of sexual imagery is finding phallic and yonic symbols) Morality over the pleasure principle in the short story “Everyday Use”

Psychological approach to literature

1st psychological approach to literature

During the twentieth century there has been a shift away from the “who done it “genre to the “why did he do it” Major writers have included Hermann Hess., Franz Kafka, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf.

In literary criticism some critics have abandoned the formalistic/aesthetic approach because of their limitations and inadequacies in coming to terms with the major concerns of modern literature. Rather than being “Art for Arts sake”, modern literature tends to be more exploratory and didactic. The emphasis is more on character and motivation than on form and structure.

The psychological approach to literary criticism is very controversial and is easily  abused.

Some critics argue that it was already used by Aristotle in his Poetics in the 4 th century BC,  when he defined tragedy as combining the emotions of pity and terror to produce “catharsis”.. These critics argue that this is merely a sub—conscious emotional response to literature.

 

FREUDIAN THEORIES

1.    Core theory — the unconscious aspects of the human psyche.  

Most of our actions (mental processes) are motivated by psychic forces over which we have little control.

·        Mind is like an iceberg — its greatest weight and density lies below the surface.

Two kinds of unconsciousness

a) pre—conscious — latent not directly aware of something, however with effort. it can be retrieved

b) unconcious — something very difficult to revivte mocceesfully blocked or repressed. Comes out in perverse ways.

Ex Novel/Movie — “Marnie

.2. Second theory (now rejected by most psychologists including Carl Jung, his disciple).

“All human behaviour is ultimately motivated  by sexuality.”

3. Freud’s Three Psychic Zones

1. Id — reservoir of libido

— primary source of all psychic energy

— functions to fulfil the primordial life principle

— our basic drives (S)

— pleasure principle

— no rational order / organisation/ will

— impulse to obtain gratification of instinctual needs

no regard for social conventions — asocial

— no values — good/evil amorphous/ amoral

— source of all aggression desires

— lawless, self—destructive

— pre—Freudians called it the “devil” in man

2. Ego

regulating agency to curb the Id

— protects the individual and society

— rational, reasoning, logical

— partially conscious

— aware of reality

3.. Super Ego

—      Largely unconscious

—      moral censoring agent

—      conscience, self—image, pride

—      moral restrictions or repression of Id.

—      blocks off or represses those drives which society regards as unacceptable.. operates on rewards and punishments

—      an overactive S.E. creates unconscious guilt (complex).

Healthy person has a well balanced Pyche, while an imbalance of any one force causes mental stress — neurosis  - today of called a syndrome or a disorder.

Id       pleasure principle  animals

Ego    reality mankind

Super Ego   morality       “        angels

Applications of Frued’s theories

1) Symbolism — most images interpreted in terms of sexuality

a) concave images (ponds, flowers, cups, vases, caves, hollows, tunnels)

—female or womb symbols

b) long  (erect) images (towers, snakes, knives, swords, trees, poles, sky scrapers, missiles)

— male or phallic symbols

c) activities (dancing riding, flying) symbols of sexual pleasure.

·        Of ten pushed too far — Little Red Riding Hood

2)  Child Psychology

infant and childhood are formative years a period of intense sexual development and awareness.

First five years children pass through several phases in erotic development.

1)       Oral   2) Anal         3) Genital

Frustration in the gratification of any of these: eating, elimination, or reproduction may result in an adult personality that is warped.

If a child’s development is arrested in any one of these phases, he may develop a “fixation”.

Fixation:

1.       Oral — pre—mature weaning    may result in cigarette smoking

2.       Anal — overly strict toilet training — fastidious, fussy

3.       Genital — close attachment to parent — may develop either  an Oedipus or Electra Complex.

 

Psychological  Defence Mechanisms

Our ego is very delicate and fragile and so we often use ways and means to

try to protect it.  In the face of confusion, disappointment, failure, conflict and frustration, our psyche needs help to cope. Without “psychological crutches” we become stressed or anxious. We can have  three reactions to Anxiety or stress:

1) Attack problem and develop solutions.

2) Ignore the problem, hope it will go away.

3) Def end ourselves (our ego, self esteem, image)

Psychological Mechanisms,

I   Substitution   -  Compensating

·        Overdoing one thing to cover up deficiencies in other areas.

·        conversationalist — good talker — not a doer.

I I.  Repression   - Blocking

·        Try to forget failures or unfortunate incident.

·        we forget to perform unpleasant duties.

I I I    RATIONALISATION  -  Justifications

·        we substitute a “good reason” for an action rather than the real one.

·        wishful thinking — not reasoning

IV.   REGRESSION   - Reverting to former states.

·        Reverting to childish behaviour or habits

·        often covers up fact that we can not cope with problem.

V.   SUBLIMATION

·        Basic drives become expressed in socially accepted forms.

·        hostility expressed in competitive sports.

·        a blood thirsty individual becomes a butcher.

VI.  - IDENTIFICATION

·        Role—playing — we take on characteristics of a person we admire. a Hero—worship or modelling (apeing)

VII.  INSULATION

·        Protective Shell

·        being aloof, distant, unconcerned, cold, “don’t  care”

·        self-sufficient,  detached  “cool”.

VIII.  SCAPEGOATING     -  Justification

·        Blaming our own faults, deficiencies, inadequacies on others.

IX.      INTELLECTUALISATION

·        Trying to remain objective, analytical, untouched in an emotionally threatening event.

X.       MALINGERING    -  A Psycho-somatic disorder

·        Adjusting through injury.

·        Taking to your bed

·        Having a headache

·        Feeling sick to the stomach

XI.         AGGRESSION  -

 Reacting rather than responding to a situation.

·        You become overwhelmed by frustration and a sense of powerlessness or impotence to the extent that you react in a violent, vindictive and destructive manner.

Merits of Psychological Approach:

In the right hands, this approach can be useful in understanding motivation and causality.  Psychoanalysis has helped us to understand human behaviour and many writers have explored this field to great advantage.

Freud’s contribution to the formative and impressionable childhood years has also assisted us in providing conditions to maximise children’s potential.

Limitations of Psychological Approach:

While beneficial, we have to realise that Psychoanalysis alone will not lead to a full understanding of a work of art.  There are many other valid interpretations

THE CONCLUSION ...

It is important to know that a Psychological Approach is not a complete explanation of a specific topic, so a particular approach is not the 'correct' answer to a topic it is simply applicable. Other approaches can then be applied to the topic as to see which applies the most and is the most reliable approach for that specific topic. therefore we should do this kind of approachment before we start to learn some subject, especially for literature it will help us to know and understand first what we are going to study and learn.

7th Translation theory
by Brainy Qoute

Translation

The act of translating, removing, or transferring; removal; also, the state of being translated or removed; as, the translation of Enoch; the translation of a bishop.

---

The act of rendering into another language; interpretation; as, the translation of idioms is difficult.

---

That which is obtained by translating something a version; as, a translation of the Scriptures.

---

A transfer of meaning in a word or phrase, a metaphor; a tralation.

---

Transfer of meaning by association; association of ideas.

---

Motion in which all the points of the moving body have at any instant the same velocity and direction of motion; -- opposed to rotation.

6th Translation Theory

Professor Mona Baker

Professor of Translation Studies

5th Translation Theory
Andrew Chesterman’s lectures

at the MonAKO Programme of Multilingual Communication, University of Helsinki

Translation strategies

What kinds of textual changes do translators make?

• Strategies are also known as shifts or procedures or techniques.

• Early classifications:

– by Nida: changes of order, omission, structure, addition

         – by Vinay and Darbelnet: loan, calque, literal translation, transposition, modulation, total syntagmatic change, adaptation.

• A summary list of some frequent strategies (with Finnish terms added):

Syntactic strategies

Literal translation          kirjaimellinen käännös

Loan                             laina

Calque                          käännöslaina

Transposition                 sanaluokan muutos

Unit change                   yksikön muutos (eg. word > phrase)

Structural change           rakenteen muutos

Cohesion change            koheesion muutos

Rhetorical  scheme change  retorisen kuvion muutos (alliteration...)

Semantic strategies

Using a synonym            synonyymi

Using an antonym          antonyymi  

Using a hyponym            alakäsite (hyponyymi)

Using a hyperonym         yläkäsite (hyperonyymi)

Condensing                    tiivistäminen

Expanding                     laajentaminen

Modulation                   modulaatio (e.g. concrete > abstract)             Rhetorical trope change  kielikuvan muutos (metaphor, irony...)

                 

Pragmatic changes

Addition                        lisääminen

Omission                       poistaminen

Explicitation                  eksplisitointi

Implicitation                  implisitointi

Domestication                kotouttaminen

Foreignization               vieraannuttaminen

Formality change           muodollisuusasteen muutos

Speech act change          puheaktin muutos

Transediting                  toimittaminen, uudelleen muokkaaminen

What might be the best strategies for translating metaphors, allusions, neologisms, names, slang, dialects.... ?

4th Translation Theory by Dr.Mashadi Said (Universitas Gunadarma)

  Translation consists of transferring the meaning of the source language text into the receptor language text.

3rd Translation Theory

Theories of localization 1 (Exploring Translation Theories)

from youtube.com

2nd Translation Theory

Translation Theory

By T. David Gordon, 1985

While not everyone who drives an automobile needs to understand the theory behind the internal combustion engine, someone does need to know this theory. I may be able to drive my Pontiac without any knowledge of internal combustion engines, until the Pontiac breaks down. Then, I must find someone (presumably a mechanic) who does in fact know enough theory to get the Pontiac running again.

The same is true of translation theory. It is not necessary for everyone to know translation theory, nor is it even necessary for pastors and teachers to know everything about translation theory. It is necessary for pastors and teachers in the American church at the end of the twentieth century to know something about translation theory, for two reasons. First, it will affect the way we interpret the Bible for our people. If we are completely unaware of translation theory, we may unwittingly mislead our brothers and sisters in our interpretation. Second, there are so many English translations available, that no contemporary pastor will be able to escape the inevitable questions about which translations are superior.

It is not my intention to provide anything like an exhaustive approach to either translation theory or semantic theory (relax, I'll define this word later). Rather, I intend to discuss briefly the more important observations, which may be useful to the pastoral ministry.

TRANSLATION THEORY

Translation destroys language walls and illuminates the gestures, assertions, and utterances of other nations. Translation heightens our sensitivity to the sensibilities of foreign cultures and customs.
Translation Studies examines the art and craft of translation, i.e., what is translated, how it is translated, how it is received in the receptor language, and especially what is said so often to be lost in translation. 
Translation erases the borders between disciplines, fostering interdisciplinary thinking and research.
Translation revitalizes the study of literature and the humanities.  Academicians have to understand that all acts of interpretation and communication are acts of translation.
Translation guarantees the survival of our civilization in a globalized world with its digital and electronic innovations. The survival will depend on how well we apply the methods of translation to initiate and promote inter-cultural communication.
Translation Studies approaches literature from a new and dynamic perspective that changes the way we view literature, cultures, and each other.
Translation charts innovative ways to study the reading of verbal, visual, and musical texts.
Translation builds bridges between the humanities and the sciences to respond to the needs of a globalized world in the 21st century.
Translation cultivates associative thinking -- the foundation of creativity. (the author : KARL VOSSLER)