A Approaches to translation and the smaller Europcan countries depend for a living on the translation of th works as well as their own translations he translation of literature in the minor languages. particularly in the developing countries, is much neglected In relation to the volume of translation. littie was written about it. The wider aspects wcrc ignored: translation's contribution to the development of national languages. its relation to meaning. thought and the language universals. lt was mainly discussed in terms ot (a) the conflict between free and literal translation. and (b) the contradiction between its inherent impossibility and its absolute necessity (Goethe. 1826). Cicero (55 Bc) first championed sense against words and said a uranslator must be either an interpreter or a rhetorician. The classical essays are those of St. Jerome (400). Luther (1530). Dryden (16g4) all favouring colloquial and natural renderings. Tytler wrote the first significant book on translation in 1790. stating that "a good translation is one in the merit of thc original work is so completely transfused into another language as to be as distinctly apprehended and as strongly felt by a native of the as it is by those who speak the language of the country to which that language belongs original work. In the nineteenth century, the important essays and references by (1813. 18u4). Humboldt (1816), Novalis (1798), Schleiermacher (813) Schopenhauer (185 l) and Nietzsche (1882) inclined towards more literal translation methods, while Matthew Arnold (1928) favoured a simple, direct and noble style translating Homer. In the twenti century. Croce (1922). Ortega y Gasset (1937) and Valéry (1946) questioned the possibility of adequate translation, particularly of poctry. Benjamin (1923) saw translation filling in the gaps in meaning in a universal recommended literal translation of syntax as well as words: "The language. He sentence is a wall blocking out the language of the original, whilst word for word translation is the arcade The above is a brief conspectus of views in the pre-linguistics period of translation. On the whole, they make no attempt to distinguish types or quality of texts (which are mainly Biblical or literary), and while they are strong on theory, they are short on method and practical examples. They show a gradual transition from a natural or free treatment towards a literal analysis, if not translation, ot the original, but there is no velopment of a theory, and many of the writers were not aware of each other's work With the increasing number of translator and reviser teams for documents and glossaries, the formulation of some translation theory, if only as a frame of reference, becomes necessary. The need is reinforced by the proliferation of terms of art, in particular of technological terms--in chemistry. for instance, a hundred internationa- lisms a month, in electronics, a few thousand a year (Spitzbart, 1972)-and by the desire to standardize the terminology, intra- and interlingually. But the main reason