Consider the following kind of criticism usually levelled at text typologies:

regard to such a letter were thought to be unwarranted since they were stereotypical and not substantiated by facts. But such evidence has now come to light. A number of cross-cultural German–English studies have since been carried out suggesting that communicative preferences exist and that these differ along five basic dimensions:directness, self-reference, content-focus, explicitness and reliance on communicative routines. Task C10.7 ➤ Having appreciated the commercial text for what it is, try now either to retrieve the letter from House 1997:169–73 or collect examples of similar letters originating in English. ➤ Attempt an analysis and translation into languages which you know to be more ‘direct’ and ‘forceful’. Researching TL preferences is obviously crucial, but, as translators working to dead- lines under pressure, rarely if ever can we afford such luxuries. We must therefore opt for a heuristics of some kind, a practical way of assessing likely target reader response. Text type and textual practices related to such macro-structures as genre are important parameters for making this heuristics less subjective. CONCLUSION In this unit, we have explored variables such as the use and user of language from the perspective of both register analysis and translation quality assessment. The latter is an important application of register theory and one which has provided translation analysts and practitioners with useful tools for judging the adequacy of a given translation strategy for a particular kind of text. But the choice of a translation strategy is not just a ST issue, nor is it exclusively a context of situation matter. Rather, it is bound up with the entire context of culture within which texts and their translation are produced. It is these issues that will occupy us in the next unit. PROJECTS 1. Find a translation with a dialect problem e.g. George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, 1916 and examine two or three versions translating the same text. Analyse and assess the strategy adopted. 2. Investigate a language which varies little in time or space e.g. Arabic, and examine how the language can cope with subtle dialect and register variations in STs belonging to variation-sensitive languages e.g. English. T e x t r e g i s t e r i n t r a n s l a t i o n 293 C SECTION ★