Abstract

This paper aims at reviewing the concept of Intralingual Translation (INTRA), in order to characterize this activity as a translation task and as an object of study of Translation Studies. Based on the debate about the status and the definition of intralingual translation (Zethsen & Hill-Madsen, 2016), we present a set of criteria that are used to describe translation and that include INTRA. After that, we propose that the concept of INTRA needs to be reformulated. Abandoning the term “Translation” as a hypernym, we coin the notion of Intralingual Reformulation as a better hypernym that includes different tasks of message reformulation across dialects, systems and representation within a single language. The resulting opposition between Interlingual Reformulation and Intralingual Reformulation captures the centrality of the process of reformulation and also specifies the distinction of interlinguality and intralinguality. Additionally, assuming Intralingual Reformulation as a hypernym also entails that this is not a single task, but that there are many different activities that can be encompassed by this term.

Keywords
Translation Studies; Intralingual translation; Intralinguality; Intralingual reformulation