KATHARINA REISS
Katharina Reiss was born on April 17, 1923 in Rheinhausen, Ger-many where she concluded her high school studies with a diplomain 1940. From 1941 to 1944 she studied at the Interpreters’ Instituteat the University of Heidelberg, receiving there her first degree as a professional translator. Reiss also translated numerous books and articles from Spanish,including works by Leopoldo Alas (Clarin), Vincente Blanco-Ibariez, Pio Baroja, Jaime Ferrero Alemparte, Gustavo Beyhaut and José Ortega y Gasset’s classic “Miseria y Esplendor de latraducción”
WHO IS SHE?
Katharina Reiss (Katharina Reiß) 1923German linguist and translation scholar. She is a defender of the Skopos theory.
Katharina Reiss approach considers the text rather than the word or the sentence as the translation unit and hence the level at which equivalence is to be sought. Reiss text typology is: informative, expressive, operative and the audio medial.
ACADEMIC CAREER
Her work first appeared in 1971 and this translation shows more clearly Reiss's treatment of a central theme in translation: how to develop reliable criteria for the systematic evaluations of translations.
Using varied examples, the author offers a pragmatic approach to text analysis, a functional perspective on translation and a specific view of the translator.
THEORY
REISS'S TEXT TYPOLOGY
Informative: where the content is the main focus. These texts do plain communication of facts, information,knowledge, opinions etc.
Expressive: text where the focus is on creative composition and aesthetics. Both the author (the sender) and the message are what are foregrounded.
Operative: text where the focus is appellative by which what is meant is that the text appeals to the reader to act in a certain way, persuading, dissuading and requesting.
WHAT IS TRANSLATION FOR REISS?
She seeks to integrate the text-typological approach as a 'specific theory' that focuses on those cases in which the Skopos requires equivalence of functions between the source and target texts in Translation
