What we talk about when we talk about a scientific approach to assessing translations

A REPLY TO BRUNO OSIMO

by Aurelia Martelli

The present paper is a reply to Bruno Osimo’s  previously published article, For a scientific approach to assessing translations, where the author proposed a scientific and reliable method for assessing translations. Although the need, especially in education, to avoid exclusively impressionistic and subjective criteria when judging translations is comprehensible, this article expresses some concern before a general trend which aims at dissecting and classifying in “scientific terms” the various components of both the translation process and the translation product, often at the expense of historical, social, biographical and creative factors.