In spite of its importance throughout history indirect (mediated) translation (ITr) has not received much attention within Translation Studies so far (which may, in fact, reflect widespread negative attitudes towards ITr among the general public). ITr has, however, undoubtedly played an important role in connecting cultures, not least when (semi)peripheral languages have been involved. This article contains some general observations concerning ITr that are partly based on research on Finnish-Icelandic literary exchange within a wider Scandinavian translational system. Various reasons for ITr are suggested and the problems of how to establish the degree of (in)directedness are dealt with, as it is well known that paratextual claims of direct translation cannot always be trusted and bibliographies tend to repeat these claims, whether true or not.The most obvious, but certainly not the only, reason for ITr is a lack of competence in the (original) SL. But ITr also highlights the power relations between cultures/languages, in so far that the mediating language is, as a rule, a dominant language whereas the TL is dominated. In today's world this can lead to an interesting conflict, e.g. in a semiperipheral country like Sweden, between the adequacy norm for high-prestige literature and a publisher's rationale increasingly bent on viewing ITr as a reasonable solution even for languages from which direct translation is a genuine option. Assuming, furthermore, a correlation between dominant languages and "domesticating" translations, the constant choice of mediating texts in a dominant language may reinforce the loss of adequacy as a result of ITr.
* = mostly used in another sense than ITrThe term adopted here, indirect translation, seems to have the edge in usage over the other suggestions. 7 It is easily transferable between languages (French traduction indirecte etc.) and it has a self-evident antonym in direct translation. The distinction secondary vs. tertiary (etc.) translation may sometimes be useful and these terms can be seen as hyponyms to the hypernym indirect translation. For the mediating language/text I will use the abbreviations ML/MT (along with the established SL/ST and TL/TT). 8 An indirect translation is, following Kittel & Frank (1991: 3):[A]ny translation based on a source (or sources) which is itself a translation into a language other than the language of the original, or the target language. This definition does not exclude back translation as the SL and the TL may be identical, although back translations, I would assume, constitute but a small fraction of the sum total of ITr. In the vicinity of ITr there is the phenomenon of eclectic translation, i.e. when several source texts are used, one of which may (or may not) be the original ST (cf. Levý's "kompilierte Übersetzung", 1969: 162).
Research on indirect translationImportant research on ITr was made by the "Sonderforschungsbereich 309: Die literarische Übersetzung" (1985)(1986)(1987)(1988)(1989)(1990)(1991)(1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997...
