SUMMARY JAKOBSON AND POLYSYSTEM

The Russian Formalists developed in the early years of the 20th century the idea
that scientific methodology could be applicable to cultural products. Various researches
in Comparative literature recovered this idea, and it is now applied to literary
translation. Part of this application was the theory of polysystems by Even-Zohar, in
which translated literature is seen as a sub-system of the receiving or target literary
system.

In his seminal paper On linguistic aspects of translation, the Russian linguist

Roman Jakobson deals with the problem of ‘deficiency’ in one particular language
stating that certain linguistic resources can be used to fill this lack. He also brings in the
relationship between gender and the grammar of a particular language, and addresses
the issue of the translatability of poetry. Jakobson argues that the meaning of a lingual
sign is its translation into another alternative sign. Translation for him involves two
equivalent messages in two different codes., and it becomes complicated when trying
to transfer meaning to a language that has different grammatical categories. Gender or
duration aspects that exist in the grammar of one language but not another might lead
to the loss of information, and this has to be compensated for by rich context. For him,
“languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may
convey”.

Itamar Even-Zohar goes further with is Polysystem theory. He takes translated

literature as a polysystem, a system of various systems which intersect with each other
and partly overlap, yet functioning as a structure whole. As such, it is heterogeneous,
stratified (with a central element, the canon, and peripheral elements, those texts
considered not to have a literary value), and dynamic (what is canon can become
periphery and vice versa). This would mean that literature is a social and therefore a
historical product. The concepts of “quality”, “prestige” and “value” depend on the
target culture and change with time, what would explain the difficulty in determining
the “literariness” of texts.
Both Jakobson and Even-Zohar take a descriptive approach, with the target text
as the object of study with its function within the target culture. What Jakobson
maintains is that the grammar of the target culture has to be taken into account when
translating texts, being more important than the source text. Even-Zohar will borrow a
number of concepts from the Russian formalism so as to develop a hypothesis that views
constituents of culture as systems rather than conglomerates of disparate elements.

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