Toury and descriptive translation studies

Working with Even-Zohar in Tel Aviv was Gideon Toury. After his early
polysystern work on the sociocultural conditions which determine the translation
of foreign literature into Hebrew, Toury focused on developing a general
theory of translation. In chapter 1, we considered Toury's diagrammatic
representation of Holmes's 'map' of translation studies. In his influential
I Descriptive Translation Studies - And Beyond (Toury 1995: lo), Toury calls
for the development of a properly systematic descriptive branch of the
discipline to replace isolated free-standing studies that are commonplace:

What is missing is not isolated attempts reflecting excellent intuitions and supply-
I
ing tine insights (which many existing studies certainly do), but a systematic branch
proceeding from clear assumptions and armed with a methodology and research

techniques made as explicit as possible and justified within translation studies
itself. Only a branch of this kind can ensure that the findings of individual studies
will be intersubjectively testable and comparable, and the studies themselves
replicable.

Toury goes on to propose just such a methodology for the branch of descriptive
translation studies (DTS).
For Toury (1995: 13)' translations first and foremost occupy a position in
the social and literary systems of the target culture, and this position determines
the translation strategies that are employed. With this approach, he is
continuing and building on the polysystem work of Even-Zohar and on
earlier versions of his own work (Toury 1978, 1980, 1985, 1991). Toury
(1995: 36-9 and 102) proposes the following three-phase methodology for
systematic DTS, incorporating a description of the product and the wider
role of the sociocultural system