Even-Zohar - polysystem theory

In the 1970s, a new stage of translation theory, scholars began focusing on translation from the perspective of the target text and culture and the communicative process as a whole. Itamar Even-Zohar, an Israeli culture researcher and professor at Tel Aviv University, since the 1970s had been working on developing theoretical tools for dealing with the complexity of socio-cultural system. Moreover, Itamar Even-Zohar, influenced by Russian formalists, developed a theory of translation based on a conception of literature as a system. However, he showed how translations can occupy a primary or secondary position in the literary system. The term polysystem means a layered conglomerate of cohesive elements that changes and mutates while these elements are in interaction with one another. Itamar Even-Zohar offered a comprehensive theoretical framework on how literary system function and develop and also how translated literature affects the national literature or is affected by the nation literature. His polysystem theory moves the study of translation out of a purely linguistic analysis.