CONFUSIONS, CLARIFICATIONS AND METHODOLOGICAL PROPOSAL FOR THE ANALYSIS OF "FUNCTIONAL" AND "SKOPOS" FUNCTIONALIST CONCEPTS IN THE PRACTICE OF TRANSLATION

The skopos theory of Reiss and Vermeer (1984;1996) has been criticized and defined by many national and intemational academics as "a theory of libertinism", "a maquiavelist theory" or "a theory without ethical principies". The origin of its innumerable interpretations and misunderstandings comes from the confusion of its own terminology. The purpose of this article is to describe some of these misunderstandings in order to throw light onto the essence of the theory according to our own interpretation, by clarifying the terminology of its theoretical metalanguage. For this reason, we will reflect on essential and obscure concepts of the theory such as "function" and "skopos" and we will consequently prove that behind the perspective of the "relativism" proposed by the theory, there are still some principies concerning "equivalence". The functional model of Hulst (1995), which will be presented in the artiele, clarifies precisely several confusing conceptual aspects of the skopos theory.