Skopos and commission in translational action

In his 1989 essay, Hans Vermeer highlights the translator’s skopos or aim as a decisive factor in a translation project. He conceives of the skopos as a complexly defined intention whose textual realization may diverge widely from the source text so as to reach a “set of addressees” in the translating culture. The success of a translation depends on its coherence with the addressees’ situation. Although the possible responses to a text cannot be entirely predicted, a typology of potential audiences might guide the translator’s labor and the historical study of translation.