Katharina Reiss Theory of Skopos and Text Typology

 By MSM YAQOOB

Katharina Reiss was one of the prominent German linguists who played a big role in translation studies. She is remembered as the pioneer of Skopos theory. Reiss distinguishes three text types based on their communicative function: informative, expressive, and operative. Let's take a close look at these terms first.

The informative text is one in which the material takes precedence. These texts convey evidence, details, experience, and opinions in a straightforward manner. What's at stake is language's logical or referential component.

The expressive text with an emphasis on aesthetics and artistic composition. The author (the sender) and the message are also highlighted. These texts are exemplified by imaginative artistic literature. 

The operative text has an appellative emphasis, which means it persuades, dissuades, requests, and cajoles the reader to behave in a certain way. Dialogic is a type of language.

She is a supporter of the skopos hypothesis. The translation unit in Katharina Reiss's approach is the text, not the word or the sentence, and therefore the degree to which equivalence is sought. The text typology of Reiss is as follows: informative, expressive, operative, and audio medial. Reiss considers translation to be a type of communication in which the translator serves as a medium. This requires the transmission of a message from the primary sender (source text) to the secondary recipient (target text). The source language and the target language are the two most important media.

The aim here is to produce a target language text “that is functionally equivalent” to the source-language text. Reiss suggests a functional text-typology approach to achieve this functional equivalence. This method uses the source text's communicative functions as a foundation for translating into the target text. In other words, a target text that does not perform the same purpose as the source text is referred to as "switch" "transfer" by Reiss. The text-typology of Reiss involves a two-phase approach to translating a text: interpretation and re-verbalization.

Reiss Typos Model prepared by Roland is here.

 

In the triangle model he classified many notions but it will be difficult for me to draw them correctly.

Reiss outlines a set of intralinguistic and extralinguistic instruction standards that can be used to determine if a TT is adequate. There are the following:

Intralinguistic Criteria: semantic, lexical, stylistic features, and grammar.

Extralinguistic Criteria: time, place, affective implications, situation, subject field, and receiver.

These can be changed according to the text type. This discussion can be summed up in Jeremy Munday’s words. “Reiss work is important because it moves translation theory beyond a consideration of lower linguistic levels, the mere words on the page, beyond even he effect they create, towards a consideration of the communicative purpose of translation.”