But whereas it is possible in much research in the social sciences to identify behavioural norms with certain manifestations of the behaviour in question (called normal behaviour), this is not possible in Translation Studies, because, like all behaviour involving language, translating behaviour is primarily mental. Its results, however important and central to the immediate aim of translation, communication, are, nevertheless, merely the outward signs of a phenomenon which, as Locke ([1690] 1977: Book Three, Chapter 2) remarked, is itself 'invisible and hidden from others'. Perkins studies college students' drinking behaviour, and the behavioural norm in this case can be established by identifying, categorising, quantifying and carrying out statistical calculations on instances of this behaviour. The relationship between the behavioural norm and its manifestations is therefore relatively simple and direct (however complicated the relationship between a drinker, his or her attitude to drinking, and his or her actual drinking behaviour may be).

Translational norms, in contrast, stand in a more complex relationship to the evidence for their operation. Even those of Toury's norm categories that are most directly related to the linguistic material that ends up constituting atranslation are guides to the selection of this material; they are never identified with it: Operational norms in general direct decisions made during translating and govern relationships between the translation and the source text (Toury, 1995: 58); the subclass, matricial norms, govern the fullness of translation, distribution of material in it and its segmentation (pp. 58-9); and the subclass, textual-linguistic norms, govern 'the selection of material to formulate the target text in' (p. 59). In other words, and as indicated in the introduction above, Toury draws a clear distinction between the norms on the one hand and, on the other hand, textual material in actual translations, which, together with textual material in source texts, manifest equivalence relationships. Equivalence relationships are categorically different from norms, and linguistic material falls into an additional, separate, third category. So the relationship between (a) textual material, which is concrete, and which is distributed across two texts that stand to one another as translation to source text; and (b) equivalence, the relationships that are obtained between textual material in the translation and textual material in the source text; and (c) norms, which are socioculturally shared psychological phenomena is extremely complex, and it is important not to slip into ways of speaking or writing which might suggest identity between translation norms and their manifestations.

Norms share this lack of identity with their manifestations with other phenomena that influence linguistic behaviour, but from which norms nevertheless differ in important respects. Consider, for example, the Gricean maxims of conversational co-operation (Grice, 1975). The maxims, and the principle of co-operation itself, are vocalisations of demands for connectivity imposed on conversational behaviour by human rationality: If our talk exchanges are to be rational, they must consist of utterances that are connected to each other, and the Co-operative Principle, 'Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged' (Grice, 1975: 45), ensures that this connectedness can be maintained, sometimes - or perhaps normally - by way of a complex conversational dance around, rather than inside spaces occupied by notions such as literalness, truth and explicitness.

The Principle ensures that conversation can happen, but it does not influence its form except insofar as the form is relevant to the perceived rationality of the conservation. A person can contravene the Maxims that fall under the Principle, but not the Principle itself, while still being considered rational. Undeclared, non-obvious non-adherence to a Maxim, such as for example lying or pretending to have more knowledge than one actually has, will mislead. Obvious non-adherence, such as for example saying more or less than or something different than a questioner might reasonably expect, will generate implicature, that is information that the addressee adds to what is actually being said and which reinstates the Maxim.

Norms, in contrast, (generally) regulate behaviour; but the behaviour survives, though it may be considered deviant, even if the norms are not adhered to (until perhaps non-adherence of a certain determined kind itself becomes the norm). We might encapsulate the differences between norms and maxims by saying that whereas norms are socially constrained, the Maxims of the Co-operative Principle are cognitively constrained. We could represent this on a cline of source of constraint, going from the social to the cognitive.

Socially constrained           Cognitively constrained

Norms                              Co-operative Principle

Let us now consider the similarities and contrasts between these two notions and the notion of the universal.

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