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Coordonator serie: Rodica Dimitriu Advisory Board: CAY DOLLERUP, Universitatea din Copenhaga, Danemarca ANTHONY HARTLEY, Universitatea din Leeds, Marea Britanie CTLINA ILIESCU GHEORGHIU, Universitatea din Alicante, Spania KINGA KLAUDZ, Universitatea Eotvos Lorand din Budapesta, Ungaria ZUZANA JETTMAROVA, Universitatea Praga, Republica Ceh SARA LAVIOSA, Universitatea din Bari, Italia ANTHONY PYM, Universitatea Rovira i Virgili, Spania MIRIAM SHLESINGER, Universitatea Bar Ilan, Israel Rodica Dimitriu is a graduate of Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iai, with a BA in English and French (1978), and a PhD in English and American literature (1999). She recived research scholarship in Britain (University of Saint Andrews, Aston University, Birmingham) and a Fullbright fellowship in the U.S.A. (State University of New York at Binghamton, Center for Research in Translation). She has taught and published articles and books in the fields of translation studies, British literature, reader-response criticism, cultural studies and ELT. She currently teaches in the Department of English at Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, and has lectured at the Faculties of Translation of the Universities of Barcelona, Salamanca, Bari, Leeds and Vigo. She is a member of the advisory board of international journals for translation and interpreting studies, such as Perspectives, Across Languages and Cultures and ESP across Cultures, and a member of the European Society for Translation Studies (EST). 2005 Institutul European, Iai www.euroinst.ro INSTITUTUL EUROPEAN Iai, str. Cronicar Mustea nr. 17, 700198, C.P. 161 euroedit@hotmail.com
Descrierea CIP a Bibliotecii Naionale a Romniei DIMITRIU, RODICA Theories and practice of translation / Rodica Dimitriu Iai : Institutul European, 2002 Bibliogr. ISBN 973-611-171-7
Reproducerea (parial sau total) a prezentei cri, fr acordul Editurii, constituie infraciune i se pedepsete n conformitate cu Legea nr. 8/1996. Printed in ROMANIA
Rodica Dimitriu
CONTENTS
Foreword / 18 1. The Cultural Turn in Translation Studies, The Translation Turn in Cultural Studies / 13 Introduction / 13 Developments in literary / cultural Translation Studies and areas of interest / 17 A sense of history / 21 Case studies and practices / 23 (Poly)Systems / 24 Prescriptive descriptive subjective / 25 Equivalence / 26 Culture / 28 The translation turn in Cultural Studies / 30 2. The Polysystem Theory: A Decisive Step for the Cultural Turn / 35 Itamar Even-Zohar: the place and functions of translations in the literary polysystem / 36 Gideon Toury's target culture-oriented approach / 42 Norms in translation / 48 Toury's description and classification of norms / 48 Chesterman's translation norms / 52 Christiane Nord's conventions / 54 Importance of norms / 55 From translation norms to translation laws / 57
Activities and discussions / 60 3. The Manipulation School: Andr Lefevere / 65 Refraction / 67 Rewriting / 68 Cultural authority / 69 Target culture constraints: ideology, patronage, poetics, professionals / 70 Language / 76 (Textual and conceptual) grids / 76 Cultural capital / 78 Importance of Lefevere's approach / 79 Activities and discussions / 82 4. Philosophical Approaches to Translation / 85 George Steiner: The hermeneutics of translation / 85 The return to Babel / 91 Translation and culture / 96 The hermeneutic motion / 98 Importance of Steiner and After Babel / 103 Jacques Derrida: deconstruction and translation / 105 Logocentrism / 106 Diffrance / 108 Context / 111 Mechanisms of deconstruction / 112 Des Tours de Babel / 113 Consequences for Translation Studies / 116 Activities and discussions / 121
5. The Translator's Status, Subjectivity and History / 127 Lawrence Venuti: the translator's status / 127 Towards resistive translations: from domesticating to foreignizing strategies / 128 Call to action / 132 Douglas Robinson: the translator's subjectivity / 133 Translating through tropes / 136 Translating through versions / 139 Conclusion / 144 Translators in history / 144 Activities and discussions / 147 6. Gender-Oriented Translation Studies / 153 Common areas of investigation / 154 Women, translations and translators sharing a similar status / 154 Translation Studies and Cultural Studies / 155 Development of Translation Studies and Gender Studies / 155 Brief outline of the feminist movement / 157 Gender-oriented Translation Studies: areas of research / 159 Historical investigations / 159 Re-writing the Bible / 163 Gender metaphors and translation / 165 Revisiting some main issues of translation / 167 Feminist translation strategies / 169 Working with language: challenging grammatical gender / 169 Translating puns / 171 Translating male authors through interventionist strategies / 173
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Politically visible feminist translators / 174 Unity and diversity in gender-oriented Translation Studies / 177 Activities and discussions / 180 7. Postcolonial Translation Studies / 183 Gender oriented and postcolonial Translation Studies / 184 Historical and geographical landmarks in the postcolonial discourse / 185 Translation and the postcolonial discourse / 188 Methodologies and key terms / 188 Translating across power differentials1: Niranjana and the British interpellation of the Indians / 192 Translating across power differentials 2: Vicente Rafael and the Spanish interpellation of the Tagalogs / 195 Different translation traditions: some postcolonial perspectives / 197 Translation and de-colonization / 201 Theorizing through metaphors / 205 Brazilian cannibalism / 206 Conclusion / 209 Activities and discussions / 212 APPENDIX 1 / 217 APPENDIX 2 / 219 Bibliography / 233
Foreword
The cultural turn in Translation Studies that Mary Snell-Hornby was noticing, at the beginning of the nineties, with regard to both the linguistic and literary branches of the discipline, came subsequently to refer to the literary orientations focusing on the cultural and ideological values that inform translation practice and research. This more specific cultural turn is also related to the development of the discipline of Cultural Studies, on which more recent directions in Translation Studies have drawn, and which could, at least in future, benefit to a higher extent from the ongoing research in translation. This book is a presentation of the latter, more specific cultural turn in Translation Studies. It examines a number of orientations that emphasize the cultural, historical and ideological dimensions of translations, highlighting the fact that translators are never innocent and their work is marked in one way or another by the times and cultures in which they live and by the power relations that operate in those cultures. This particular cultural turn has had its own evolution that this book tentatively follows: from the polysystem theory, which is the formalist / structuralist version of literary Translation Studies, to the gender-oriented and postcolonial approaches, which have been informed by hermeneutics and, increasingly, by deconstruction. The first chapter attempts to capture the variety of directions in literary Translation Studies, their common concerns, as well as the (obvious) links between Translation Studies and Cultural Studies and the ways in which the two disciplines could better draw on each other. There is still little evidence of the translation turn in Cultural
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Studies that Susan Bassnett was looking forward to, back in 1998, but the issue is, nevertheless, approached, in view of the high potential of this almost unexplored area of research. The following chapters deal with these directions separately, highlighting the most salient points of the translation scholars' contributions. Thus, through the polysystem theory, Itamar Even-Zohar and Gideon Toury were able to locate and contextualize translations in the target culture and investigate the various kinds of translation norms that guide the translators' work. Their research on norms was subsequently completed by other scholars (Andrew Chesterman, Christiane Nord) working outside the polysystem. (Chapter 2) The Manipulation School, mainly represented by Andr Lefevere, focuses on the ideological constraints translators undergo and the manipulations of many sorts to which readers are submitted. Lefevere is the first to associate translations to other forms of rewriting operating in a culture, which all wield the considerable power of shaping images of foreign authors, texts and cultures for the target one. (Chapter 3) A special chapter is devoted to two main directions in philosophy that have informed the translation scholars' research. Its first part is a reconsideration of George Steiner's seminal After Babel and of his hermeneutics of translation. The second part examines some of the key concepts of Jacques Derrida's philosophy of deconstruction, in which translation is used as a testing ground, and which has had a considerable impact on contemporary cultural trends in Translation Studies. (Chapter 4) Lawrence Venuti and Douglas Robinson are among the scholars who have investigated the (long-neglected) figure of the translator, as a person with a social status and a distinct subjectivity. The translators' cultural merits throughout history are foregrounded by Jean Delisle and Judith Woodsworth who, alongside with other scholars, have carried out research along these lines. (Chapter 5) One of the directions that has been fuelled by Cultural Studies is genderoriented Translation Studies, which has brought to translation a better understanding of the complexities of gender and culture, and of the ways in which patriarchal attitudes can be subverted through linguistic and cultural transfers undertaken by ideologically committed (women)
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translators. (Chapter 6) Another translation perspective deriving from Cultural Studies, the postcolonial one, uses translations both as a means of exposing the cultural asymmetries and power differentials between the colonizers and the colonized as well as an instrument in the process of (mental) de-colonization. (Chapter 7) The plurality of cultural approaches to translation has considerably enriched the area of research of the discipline. At the same time, each of these trends, although analyzed in chapters apart, is not treated in isolation, but in relation to the others, through frequent cross-references. Moreover, except for Chapter 1, which is a general survey and state of the art for cultural Translation Studies, all the other theoretical chapters are supplemented with activities that enable the readers to develop their understanding of the theoretical issues and associated metalanguage, as well as to apply their theoretical knowledge to case studies and texts derived from their own culture. Many of these activities could, in fact, be enlarged and turned into suitable topics for further research in the field, including MA dissertations and even PhD's. The target culture that is mainly taken into consideration is, therefore, the Romanian culture, for which very few investigations in the light of contemporary cultural Translation Studies have been carried out, but, at the same time, other target cultures may easily be held in view in order to cover the topic(s) suggested by each activity. The two annexes have been regarded as necessary for two (different) reasons. ANNEX 1 presents two general maps of the discipline, which help locate the different branches and areas of research of cultural Translation Studies described in the book. ANNEX 2 is the English version of Walter Benjamin's seminal essay The Task of the Translator, which has frequently served as a landmark in the translation scholars' investigations throughout this volume and requires, therefore, a special attention. The Bibliography comprises the most significant contributions to the field available so far, as well as the texts that have been used for activities and discussions in this volume. Nowadays, the existence of a linguistic and a cultural / literary orientation in Translation Studies or, sometimes, the unawareness
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that there are, in fact, two main trends in the discipline still creates confusion in different academic settings. In view of its interdisciplinary character, hence of the variety of methodologies and perspectives through which it can be approached, translation is still assimilated, in many places, either to applied linguistics or to comparative literature and cultural studies. Although this book focuses on the literary / cultural directions, my underlying ideological position is that the modern discipline of Translation Studies encompasses both directions of research.* This is in keeping with Holmes's map (see ANNEX 1) and in the spirit of the historic colloquium held in Leuven in 1976, when Andr Lefevere defined Translation Studies as the discipline which concerns itself with problems raised by the production and description of translations, and saw it as addressing both literary studies and linguistics. As this book hopefully shows, cultural translation scholars have not ignored the importance of language in cultural transfer, in the same way in which the linguistics-oriented ones have increasingly integrated linguistic transfers into their cultural setting. Moreover, translation scholars undertaking research in one particular field can no longer ignore the existence of other directions in translation which are, in one way or another, always related to theirs. In the academia, this thing seems to have been best understood by organizers of congresses and conferences of Translation Studies, where scholars from both directions join together. But in many parts of the world Romania included the specificity of Translation Studies still needs to be acknowledged through distinct translation programmes (or translation departments, centres, faculties, etc.), which should offer courses that reflect this variety of approaches rather than relegate translation either to linguistics or to Literary and Cultural Studies. In the meantime, this volume has been designed so as to correspond to the diversity of academic settings in which translation is taught. It could serve as a coursebook for MA programmes in
In fact, this book could also be read as a sequel to a previous one, dealing with the linguistic, pragmatic and functionalist orientations in Translation Studies, Theories and Practice of Translation (2002), Iai: Institutul European. 11
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(literary) Translation Studies, Cultural Studies, Comparative Literature and Literary Studies as well as a basis for doctoral courses in the field. And, above all, it aims to encourage reflection, investigation and awareness of this outstanding orientation in the discipline and to help its readers link translation, literature and culture in an increasingly refined manner.
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1. The Cultural Turn in Translation Studies, the Translation Turn in Cultural Studies
Every step of the translation process from the selection of foreign texts to the implementation of translation strategies to the editing, reviewing and reading of translations is mediated by the diverse cultural values that circulate in the target language, always in some hierarchical order. (Lawrence Venuti)
Introduction
In one of their programmatic writings on the recent developments in Translation Studies, Andr Lefevere and Susan Bassnett (1990) use the phrase cultural turn in order to signal the researchers' increasing interest in investigating translation as a phenomenon that could no longer be described and explained without an in-depth analysis of the cultural contexts which it involves. In fact, I choose to read this statement as referring to both the linguistic-pragmatic direction of the discipline as well as to the literary/ Cultural one1 the latter stance being the one from which these authors were actually writing. The cultural turn in Translation Studies in a non-capitalized form, i.e. in a broader sense and not linked in a direct manner to the discipline of Cultural Studies has been gradual. Over the last four decades researchers have tried, in various ways, to emphasize the cultural component of the translation theories they proposed. As far as the linguistic trends are concerned, suffice it to say that, in time, linguistic approaches to translation have constantly widened their area
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I will capitalize the c whenever cultural is directly related to the discipline of Cultural Studies. 13
of investigation: from cultural terms/words, they have moved to (culture-determined) texts, and to increasingly detailed descriptions of cultural contexts in which translations of non-literary and literary texts occur. Contemporary functionalist approaches have gone as far as to speak of a linguaculture (Nord 1997) in order to highlight the interdependence between language and culture. From the same perspective translation is seen as a cross-cultural event and culture is defined as the total of conventions to be observed in a society. (Vermeer 1992: 9) This is a broad definition, which also incorporates a social dimension, and suggests, through its very conciseness, the complexity of the concept. In her turn, Mary Snell-Hornby (1990), a translation scholar who has gradually shifted to an integrated approach to translation,1 is the one who has actually coined the phrase cultural turn in a paper in which she regards culture and not the text as the main unit of translation. Still, what roughly differentiates the translation scholars working along the linguistic paradigm from their literary colleagues is the former's main interest in the linguistic / pragmatic aspects of translation, even if interlinguistic variation is examined in an increasingly explicit cultural context. However, this book mainly focuses on a series of approaches to translation that examine the links between translated literary texts and the cultures in which they are embedded as well as their relationship to (more recent) ongoing discourses in the discipline of CulturalStudies. Sherry Simon (1996: 137) highlights the considerable diversity of these directions and their contribution to the development of Translation Studies as follows:
The cultural turn in translation studies has begun the process of examining the ways in which translation is nourished by and contributes to the dynamics of cultural representation. The See Mary Snell-Hornby, Translation Studies: an Integrated Approach, Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1988. Her model, nevertheless, combines insights from pragmatics and psycholinguistics and shares little in common with the more radical stances taken by some directions within the Cultural direction. 14
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descriptive methods favored by the polysystem theory have encouraged the study of large corpuses of specific translation genres: theatre (Brisset), science fiction (Gouanvic) or novels (Toury). Examination of translation trends that prevail during specific periods brings an understanding of the larger cultural forces at work in translation. In addition, emphasis is placed on the material reality of translated texts, as separate from the originals. Numerous case studies show how translators actualize prevailing attitudes toward Otherness (Lefevere). The centrality of translation to the imposition and maintenance of colonialism, for instance, is a powerful case in point (Niranjana). There is a recognition of the translator as fully engaged in the literary, social and ideological realities of his or her time.
Most scholars who work(ed) in the cultural direction of Translation Studies are members of Departments of (Comparative) Literature, Cultural Studies or Translation Studies, and tackle translation phenomena from different angles. Their discourse is in keeping with the current developments in literary theory and criticism, advances in philosophy, Cultural Studies and sociology. Their multiple interests go from the position occupied by translations in various cultures to the way in which socio-cultural factors, poetics, ideology, politics, ethnic / gender identity, have shaped translations at different times and in different geographical areas. Many of them are equally concerned with the translators' social status, with their active role as gifted (re)creators and cultural mediators. Their studies mainly have in view literary works, although their theories could well inform non-literary texts as well. The relatively fragmentized groups or individual academics who have worked along these lines use concepts, categories and terminology which were initially of formalist-structuralist extract, but which have, nowadays, been consistently enriched by terms and categories belonging to deconstruction, Cultural Studies and sociology. These scholars have a series of objectives and projects to fulfil on their political agenda, all of which have an important cultural dimension. Some of these goals have, so far, included: Providing generalizing translation laws by extensively observing the translators' regularity of behaviour (polysystem theorists) or, from a more realistic stance,
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Detecting and describing the (more productive category of) translation norms, and the way they function at different times, in different cultures in order to better account for the relationships between source texts and their translations (G. Toury, T. Hermans, A. Chesterman, etc.); Unraveling socio-cultural contexts, ideologies, institutions and networks of relations in which translations are produced in order to o account for the function and impact of translations in different cultures (polysystem theorists, A. Lefevere, T. Hermans, S. Bassnett, A. Pym, D. Robinson, etc.); o demonstrate that translations are manipulations undertaken for various purposes (A. Lefevere, T. Hermans, D. Robinson, A. Pym, L. Venuti, feminist translation scholars, postcolonial translation scholars), and thus: highlight the power of translations in constructing cultural identities (L. Venuti, D. Robinson, A. Pym, postcolonial and feminist translation scholars, S. Bassnett, etc.); highlight the power of translations in projecting strong images of the cultures involved (A. Lefevere, S. Bassnett, post-colonial translation scholars) and, in a more militant vein: o develop (translation) strategies of resistance to manipulation (L. Venuti, feminist translation scholars, postcolonial translation scholars); o change the translators' status and/or that of other repressed categories such as members of colonized nations, women, etc. (L. Venuti, M. Cronin, postcolonial and gender-oriented translation scholars, etc.); o focus on translators as active mediators, and real persons rather than mere socio-cultural aspects of source and target texts (D. Robinson, A. Pym, L. Venuti, postcolonial and gender-oriented translation scholars).
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Discuss specific strategies for translating different literary genres (e.g. S. Bassnett); Describe the complex process of internationalization of translation, the factors involved, and the consequences for the meaning of the concept itself as well as integrate translation into more global structures (J. Lambert, T. Hermans, L. Venuti, A. Pym, etc.). Some of the most salient literary / cultural theories of translation will be examined, in more detail, in the following chapters, together with their contribution to the evolution of Translation Studies, and their impact on the development of research in the field.1 This also includes a discussion of two important philosophical directions and seminal texts in hermeneutics and deconstruction that have informed, implicitly or explicitly, different lines of thought, and have served as unifying premises in establishing links between Translation Studies and other related fields such as literary theory, literary criticism and Cultural Studies.
and principles of the literary side of the new discipline were discussed in more detail at the historic Colloquium held in Leuven in 1976. Among the participants there was a group of scholars from Belgium and Holland (James Holmes, Jos Lambert, Raymond Van den Broeck, Andr Lefevere, etc.) as well as from Tel Aviv (Itamar EvenZohar, Gideon Toury) who joined their efforts so as to open new directions in the theory and methodology of research in translation. In their Preface to the proceedings of the colloquium the editors mention its main purposes:
First to discuss major topics in present-day translation studies in order to arrive at a better understanding of both theoretical criteria for characterizing literary translations and useful categories and methods for describing literary texts. Second, to make an attempt at defining the proper place of the study of translation(s) within the whole of literary studies today by highlighting the role and function of translated texts within the literary continuum. (1978: vii)
It is also in the proceedings that Andr Lefevere, one of the most active scholars in the field, and a member, at that time, of what came to be known, for a while, as the Low Countries Group, wrote an Appendix, significantly entitled Translation Studies: the Goal of the Discipline, which worked as a manifesto for this new orientation in literary Translation Studies. After defining Translation Studies as the discipline which concerns itself with problems raised by the production and description of translations, Lefevere saw its goal as being to produce a theory which can also be used as a guideline for the production of translations. (1978: 234) Lefevere regarded this theory as neither neopositivist (i.e. narrowly scientific) nor hermeneutic, a stance that he (simply) equated to the claims made by individual thinkers trying to arrive single-handedly at universally valid ideas, truths and grammatical forms. (cf. Gentzler 1993: 74) Moreover, he saw it as dynamic, in a state of continuous evolution, being constantly tested by case-histories. Thus, the links with practice were established from the very start, and it would be fair to acknowledge that they have not been lost from sight to this day by most of the scholars working in the field. Most significantly, Lefevere
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and other participants in the colloquium saw the discipline as addressing both literary studies and linguistics, a thing which, as Bassnett (1998: 125) shows, made it possible for Translation Studies to occupy a new space of its own. The presence in Leuven of the two scholars from the School of Tel Aviv that came to be associated with the polysystem theory in Translation Studies was a good opportunity for the Low Countries Group to become acquainted with their work and share for a while academic concerns in common. In their seminal papers La traduction et les courants littraires and The Nature and Role of Norms in Literary Translation, Itamar Even Zohar and Gideon Toury, applied the (formalist) category of polysystem to the field of literature in order to explain the position and functions of literary translations within receiving cultures and, respectively, detect the translation norms operating in different cultures at particular times in history. This wellorganized and yet flexible framework for describing and explaining translations and their more comprehensive cultural and literary contexts has been highly influential and has triggered a vast amount of empirical work that shows how literary works fare in time (history) and space (different receiving cultures) through translations. However, in the 1980's some literary translation scholars became more specifically interested in issues that brought them into closer contact with Cultural Studies, involving ideological pressures and processes of manipulation that may be associated with the translator's work. Since the early eighties (when he moved to the United States) Lefevere became related to the so-called Manipulation School, a name that draws on the title of a volume edited by Theo Hermans in 1985, The Manipulation of Literature. Studies in Literary Translation. Its Preface could well be regarded as the state-of-theart for part of the current research in the literary Translation Studies of the eighties. The Manipulation School thus pleaded, among other things, for
an approach to literary translation which is descriptive, targetoriented, functional and systemic; and an interest in the norms and constraints that govern the production and reception of translations, in 19
the relations between translation and other types of text-processing, and in the place and role of translation both within a given literature and in the interaction between literatures. (1985: 10)
Starting in the late eighties, the shift of emphasis from literary to Cultural Studies affiliations has become increasingly obvious. Nowadays there is a plurality of translation scholars many of them working along post-structuralist, post-modernist and deconstructionist lines whose reasearch is more in keeping with areas of interest in Cultural Studies. Lawrence Venuti, Douglas Robinson, Marlyn Gaddis Rose (United States), Rosemary Arrojo, (Brazil), Annie Brisset, Sherry Simon, Louise von Flotow, Agnes Whitfield (Canada), Tejaswini Niranjana, Gayatri Spivak (India), Susan Bassnett (England), Anthony Pym (Spain), are only a few names from a much longer list. Instead of systems-relations they seem to be more concerned about problems of cultural identity and the way it is constructed, translators' visibility, hegemonic relations between cultures, cultural metaphors for translations, interliminal spaces between originals and their translations, hybrid products, resistive translation strategies, translation as recreation and transformation, ethnic/gender minorities, etc. Not infrequently, the scholars' ideological stance is politically committed. This is, for instance, the case with postcolonial and gender-related translation discourses, two areas in which Translation and Cultural Studies have a lot to share. At the same time, the 1990's and the turn of the 21st century have witnessed both in Cultural and in Translation Studies a revival of interest in sociology and a return to systems related to this discipline (Pierre Bourdieu, Niklas Luhmann). In this manner, some researchers hope to reveal the intricate network of relationships characterizing the complex process of internationalization of translation. In this new context national and cultural boundaries have become fuzzy and translations are performed in increasingly sophisticated forms. In spite of the considerable diversification of concerns in contemporary Translation Studies, and, more importantly, in spite of the (sometimes strikingly) different opinions among the scholars
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themselves there are a series of assumptions and interests that they all seem to share.
A sense of history
There are several reasons for which the historical perspective holds a major place in the theorists ongoing research. On the one hand, it has provided a concrete, dynamic and realistic background against which to analyse particular historical products in order to explain the mechanisms of change in literary history for which translations have been instrumental. In the highly formal polysystem theory, the historical dimension has enabled researchers to describe and account for the place and functions of translations at different times, in different target cultures and detect historically determined norms of translation behaviour. The Manipulation School as well as the contemporary Cultural approaches to translation have shifted the emphasis of the historical perspective towards a sense of greater relativity and of the greater importance of concrete negotiations () as opposed to abstract, general rules that would always be valid. (Bassnett and Lefevere 1998: 1, my emphasis) From the deconstructionist stance frequently adopted by feminist and postcolonial Translation Studies, the historical dimension articulates a concept of () subjectivity without pinning it down one way or the other for all time, construing it instead in relation to concrete habits, practices and discourses, while at the same time recognizing the fluidity of these. (Alcoff cited in von Flotow 1997: 98) At the same time, for the post-colonial critics the historical fact of colonization is the very raison d'tre for their discourse. The historical thrust equally enables translation scholars to retrieve peripheral texts (written or translated by women, for example) and call into question the way in which translated texts became canonized. On the other hand, besides using the historical dimension in order to examine case studies, translation scholars have shown an interest in histories of (traditional) translation theory. Herman's distinction between histories of translations (as part of case studies) and histories of translation theory (1999: 79) is significant in this
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respect. Douglas Robinson, the editor of a comprehensive anthology of Western Translation Theory: from Herodotus to Nietzsche (1997c) refers to the benefits of historical research in the following terms:
It is () valuable for translators and interpreters to know () how the rules and guidelines that they take to be the only correct way to proceed were first formulated, how they changed over the centuries, when and how and in what circumstances they became norms, how they have been challenged. This sort of history helps translators to place translation norms in a larger perspective, to see them as part of a larger historical whole and thus, possibly, to venture beyond them in appropriate contexts. (1997a: 49)
In his turn, Hermans, citing D'hulst, considers the significance of such histories from an even wider perspective and relates them to thinking about language, philosophy, rhetoric and religion. (cf. 1999: 79) What is important, though, from a methodological stance is precisely to contextualize and historicize (traditional) translation theory, which might otherwise leave the impression (not infrequent among some scholars today) that the only issue it deals with is that of the fidelity of translation. That is why a series of anthologies of translation besides Robinson's there is also Venuti's, The Translator Studies Reader (2000) as well as less comprehensive ones include the editors' comments, which mediate and contextualize the texts for the contemporary readers. The Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (1998) contains a whole section devoted to History and Traditions, which examines the ways in which translations and translation approaches have developed in different cultures throughout history. Each such tradition is supplemented by biographies of outstanding translators. Finally, histories of (individual) translators, such as Jean Delisle's and Judith Woodsworth's Translators through History (1995) highlight the merits of all those who, toiling in conditions of invisibility, have contributed in a decisive manner to the progress of mankind.
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historical circumstances which make them possible. (cf. Arrojo 1998: 43) This means that presentations of case studies and theorizing are tightly interwoven and the former function as evidence and vivid proofs in accounting for cultural and publishing hegemony, asymmetrical relations between cultures, translators' invisibility or patriarchal relations. In Massardier-Kenney's words, this tight interconnection is due to the fact that
Translation practice is always a practice of a theory or a working out of an ideological position (). Translation theory inevitably emerges out of a specific practice. (cited in von Flotow, 1997: 33)
(Poly)Systems
Many translation scholars particularly those working in the seventies and eighties have used the (poly)system as a framework for carrying out their investigations. Historically, the concept is rooted in Russian Formalism (e.g. Victor Shklovski, Roman Jakobson, Yuri Tinjanov, etc.) and Czech Structuralism (e.g. Jan Mukaovsk, Felix Vodika, etc.) and is seen as a reaction against impressionistic or (mere) factfinding criticism. The (poly)systemic framework made it possible for Itamar Even-Zohar to account for the presence of translations in the literary polysystem and describe their position and function within a culture. Even-Zohar explains his preference for the term polysystem in that it highlights the dynamic and heterogeneous (1990: 12) quality of a system. Other critics have subsequently dropped the poly as redundant but have, nevertheless, considered literature as a system and described the relations operating both inside and between the literary system and other systems. To the scholars of the School of Tel Aviv as well as to the Manipulation School, all well-acquainted with the work of their Russian and Czech predecessors, (poly)system has been a complex enough category for elaborating a(n ambitious) historicalrelative socio-cultural theory of how texts get to be translated in a culture, the way they are translated, and what constraints may operate on the translators' choices. Subsequently Lefevere retained system as a backdrop for his literary and translation-related considerations, yet
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choosing to focus on the socio-cultural and ideological factors that account for the translators' strategies. However, he mentions the advantages of working within a system: o its basic tenets are relatively easy to explain; o it promises to be productive, i.e it may reveal problems of importance to the study; o it is plausible, i.e. it is used by other disciplines as well; o it provides a neutral, non-ethnocentric framework for the discussion of power and relationships shaped by it. (cf. 1992b: 10) The systemic framework has been dropped as an explanatory support from the work of many translation scholars today, whereas to some others it has kept its interest particularly under the form of sociological models. One is based on Pierre Bourdieu's systemic sociology of literature and has been used, for instance, by Jean-Marc Gouanvic, who applies Bourdieu's concepts of field and habitus to translations of American fiction in France. Another model draws on Niklas Luhmann's application of modern systems theory to a range of social and cultural questions and is presented by Hermans (1999: 137-150) in more detail as it seems to provide the necessary theoretical apparatus for carrying out promising translation research in future.
as a set of prescriptive norms, as well as against the more inflexible linguistic approaches that were striving to reach the ultimate perfect translation. A non-prescriptive (theoretical) attitude, if by prescriptive we mean imposing only one particular way of translating and providing models in this respect, has to a certain extent remained valid to this day. In practice, though, purely descriptive analyses are difficult if not impossible to achieve as long as the authors' subjectivity can never be totally eliminated from their texts. Thus, for instance, when such analyses entail comparisons of several translations of the same source text, theorists make choices, which are, in themselves, an indirect form of evaluation (e.g. Bassnett, 1992; Lefevere 1992a). Non-prescriptiveness combined with a subjective attitude becomes increasingly problematic in the postmodernist translational discourse. How to be fully committed to a particular (ideological, political) cause e.g. translators', women's colonized people's status without persuading the others to join in, which is just another form of prescribing? Hence Venuti's remark (1995a: 312) that research into translation can never be simply descriptive. What Venuti does not say, though, is that it should be prescriptive. Speaking from the perspective of the Manipulation school, Hermans (1999: 156) attempts a more balanced definition of non-prescriptiveness by introducing a historical dimension to his discussion:
A non-prescriptive study of translation should not seek to impose on the practice of translation, but to account for its deployment and conceptualization in history, including contemporary history. It should also seek to theorize its own contingency, and the precariousness of its own dependence on and distance from prevailing practices of translation.
Equivalence
In spite of their prevailing concern for investigating translated texts in their target cultures, the concept of equivalence, which links a translation to its source, has been dealt with by literary translation scholars, even if, more often than not, in order to be discarded.
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However, in their early studies literature-oriented theorists provided thorough investigations of the concept. After reviewing all possible equivalence levels, Raymond Van den Broeck (1978) adopts a functional-semiotic perspective, which does not lose sight of the cultural and literary context of the target text. From a one-to-one, equivalence is seen on a many-to-one basis. Holmes (1988) discards equivalence as perverse, at least when it comes to translating poetry, and would rather start by describing the translation process in terms of the many choices it involves. In his examination of the links between the source and target texts Hendrik Van Gorp (1978) refers to translation as a metatext, which is related to a prototext, the connection between the two being accounted for by the concept of intertextuality. Working from a polysystemic perspective, Toury (1980, 1995) still preserves the term, although, as will be seen, it is the concept of norm that carries the weight in his theory and, in a sense, replaces equivalence. In his view, it is the target text norms and not the translator's fidelity to the source that are responsible for the translators' decisions, a thing that makes the presence of equivalence somehow redundant in his theory. From the ideological stance of the Manipulation school, Lefevere dismisses equivalence as too vague and as a fading glory (1992a) and provides instead other less technical terms. First he coined the term refraction (1981b), which meant initially the adaptation of a work of literature to a different audience. The term took on yet another acceptation, of any text produced on the basis of another with the intention of adapting that other text to a certain ideology. The second meaning of refraction brings into relief ideological asymmetries existing between source and target texts. Subsequently Lefevere introduced the term rewriting for all the writings which are intra and interlingually derived from the same source text (literary criticism, reviews, adaptations, anthologies, etc.) translation being regarded as its most important form. (1992b) The term once again suggests that the relationship between the originals and their translations is not a transparent one as long as
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texts are rewritten by cultural mediators such as translators, who operate under particular ideological constraints. To the ideologically committed post-modernist, deconstructionist postcolonial and feminist translation scholars equivalence is no longer an option. Issues of manipulation, displacement, domestication or foreignization, omission, etc., reveal a world of linguistic difference (and diffrance), of cultural asymmetries and power differentials in which the idea of equal value that equivalence suggests would run counter to the very premises of their discourse. Moreover, from this perspective discussing translation in terms of equivalence would imply to regard translations as mere copies of their originals and translators as mere copyists, thus denying to them their active role as creative writers and sending them back to their former condition of invisibility.
Culture
Undertaking research from a literary / cultural perspective has, of course, been fundamental both for contextualizing and empowering translation. On the one hand, while examining translated texts scholars could account for ideological factors and specific norms that had an impact on the translators' activity at various times in history. On the other, translations could be perceived as factors of cultural change and progress also wielding the power to shape strong images of cultures, texts and authors and to construct cultural identities. Surprisingly enough such research provides very few definitions of culture, theorists generally adopting a broad perspective and including both social and political aspects into their cultural investigations. Lefevere defines culture as the environment of a literary system (cited in Munday 2001: 131) and the vagueness and conciseness of his definition could, perhaps, testify to his willingness to capture (some of) the complexity and the interconnections operating in this environment rather than (unnecessarily?) compartimentize it. Moreover, particularly before the post-modern age, cultures were frequently considered as stable homogeneous monoliths, in keeping with the (19th century) idea of nation states. In the polysystem theory translations seem to take place between equal cultural systems. By
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insisting on ideology Lefevere was able to bring into discussion issues of cultural authority and cultural prestige (1992b) that have a bearing on translation policies and strategies, highlighting in this way the asymmetrical relations which exist between cultures. However, this aspect comes into sharper focus in the postcolonial discourse. Douglas Robinson, among others, notices the more ideologically committed discourse of the scholars working in Cultural Translation Studies:
Where the descriptivists were neutral, dispassionate, striving for scientific objectivity, the feminists and postcolonialists are politically committed to the overthrow of patriarchy, colonialism and capitalism, and determined to play an activist role in that process. As a result, their writing styles are more passionately engaged (if seen from within) or politically correct (if seen from without). They are also even more tolerant of propagandistic and other highly contested forms of translation than the descriptivists. Their sympathies are always with oppressed minority cultures. (1997b: 233)
Nowadays, developing in parallel with Cultural Studies, Translation Studies too regards culture as a site of problematization. As Sherry Simon (1999: 72) claims,
culture no longer offers itself as a unifying force; nation, language, culture no longer line up as bounded and congruent realities. () Writing across languages, writing through translation, becomes a particularly strong form of expression at a time when national cultures have themselves become diverse, inhabited by plurality.
As will be seen, cultural plurality which includes ethnic and women sub-cultures, as well as the hegemonic relations between the former colonizers and their colonized has given rise, among other things, to specific translation strategies through which cultural difference is highlighted and minorities empowered. The products of such strategies are hybrid texts, sites of conflict between cultures, languages and codes. Cultural plurality ultimately generates a culture of the inbetween which makes translation in the traditional sense of a full transmissal of subject matter impossible. According to Homi Bhabha,
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The migrant culture of the in-between, the minority position, dramatizes the activity of culture's untranslatability; and in so doing, it moves the culture's appropriation beyond the assimilationist's dream, or the racist's nightmare, of a 'full-transmissal of subject matter'; and towards an encounter with the ambivalent process of splitting and hybridity that marks the identification with culture's difference. (1994: 224)
Even from a more sociological perspective, the (Eurocentric) idea of equating cultures with nations and monolingual territories no longer corresponds to present-day processes of internationalized mass communication and globalization in which cultural and state boundaries are often transgressed. Thus Lambert refers to the many (explicit and hidden) ways in which translation is present in this transcultural communication: advertisements, translations of EU documents, international finance, fashion, etc. (cited in Hermans 1999: 122) Rather than talk about translations in or between cultures Pym (forthcoming) adopts Prunc's category of translation culture, which refers to the variable set of norms, conventions and expectations that form the behaviour of all interactants in the field of translation, a concept that he views as potentially straddling national boundaries. Hence Pym's further suggestion in terms of categories is that of professional interculture, formed and deployed by people engaged in cross-cultural communication, such as translators. The relationship between culture and translation has taken extremely complex forms in contemporary Translation Studies. Not only has the concept of culture become a place of plurality and difference, but translation itself has gone a long way in order to adjust itself to these multi-, inter- and trans- cultural changes. At the same time, the social dimension of this multi- rather than cross- cultural communication is becoming increasingly important to the translation scholars.
with Andr Lefevere (1998), Susan Bassnett reversed the perspective analyzing, in an article bearing this title, the translation turn in Cultural Studies. This time she is interested in the ways in which the vast amount of research in literary/cultural translation could be of relevance to Cultural Studies, an interdiscipline whose development, she claims, parallels in many respects that of Translation Studies. The similarities between (literary) Translation Studies and Cultural Studies that Bassnett discovers are: their interdisciplinary status, the distinction they operate between high and low culture and the relatively similar phases these disciplines have been through. Citing Anthony Easthope who pleads for a move from literary studies to Cultural Studies, Bassnett finds that the phases suggested by Easthope for the evolution of Cultural Studies are covered by Translation Studies as well. To Easthope's culturalist phase (which, according to Bassnett is best represented in Translation Studies by E. A. Nida, J. C. Catford, G. Mounin and P. Newmark), structuralist (polysystem theorists: Even Zohar and Toury) and poststructuralist (e.g. scholars working in gender-oriented and postcolonial Translation Studies) phases Bassnett adds a fourth, the internationalist one. For both (inter)disciplines this has meant a turn to sociology, ethnography and history, in order to account for the increasing globalizing systems in which intercultural communication takes place (Translation Studies) and to describe (Cultural Studies) the relationship between globalization, on the one hand, and the rise of nationalisms on the other. (1998: 133) Bassnett considers that this is precisely the right time for these two interdisciplines to meet. According to Lefevere, the obvious common ground that Translation and Cultural Studies share is that they are both instances of cultural interaction. (1998: 6) Translation Studies, through its impressive research in translation history and case studies, is in an optimum position to document this intercultural transfer. Through the unifying concept of rewriting (previously defined) that Lefevere coined, a series of issues of interest to Cultural Studies could find an answer through research supplied by Translation Studies. Such issues may concern: the way the image of one culture is constructed for
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another by translations, together with other forms of rewriting; why certain texts are translated / rewritten and not others; what is the agenda behind the production of translations / rewritings; how the techniques of translation are used in the service of a given agenda, etc. Bassnett (1998: 134) detects other areas of interest in Cultural Studies that could be informed by research in Translation Studies. One of them is the debate on value whether it is aesthetic or material, i.e. whether related to the idea of a literary canon premised upon the universal greatness of key writers or if some other factors besides the aesthetic ones come into play. Translation Studies has repeatedly shown in this respect and sometimes more convincingly so that the transfer of texts across cultures by no means depends on the supposed intrinsic value of the text itself alone. In Bassnett's view, both Cultural Studies and Translation Studies are highly concerned with issues of power relations and textual production and both have so far independently shown that texts cannot exist outside a network of power relations that control their production. Once again a high amount of data from Translations Studies could supplement such investigations. The fact is that whereas Translation Studies, particularly in its post-structuralist hyposthasis, has drawn on Cultural Studies, on issues such as gender and post-colonial discourse, Cultural Studies has scarcely examined these discourses from a real translation perspective. The word translation, although it does occur, is mainly metaphorically used. In Stuart Hall's words, translation (as opposed to tradition) describes
those identity formations which cut across and intersect natural frontiers, and which are composed of people who have been dispersed forever from their homelands. Such people retain strong links with their places of origin and their traditions, but they are without the illusion of a return to the past. They are obliged to come to terms with the new cultures they inhabit, without simply assimilating to them and losing their identity completely. () People belonging to such cultures of hybridity () are irrevocably translated. The word 'translation', Salman Rushdie notes, comes etymologically from the Latin for 'bearing across'. Migrant writers like him, who belong to 32
two worlds at once, having been borne across the worldare translated men. They are the products of the new diasporas created by the post-colonial migrations. They must learn to inhabit at least two identities, to speak two cultural languages, to translate and negotiate between them. Cultures of hybridity are one of the distinctly novel types of identity produced in the era of late-modernity (1992: 310, my bolds)
Although in this expanded metaphor of translation Hall also refers to the operation as such, showing it as performed and negotiated by those with a multiple / hybrid cultural identity, it is Translation Studies which has dealt with actual translations and negotiations. Of course, examining in more concrete terms the ways in which this diaspora translates could lead to interesting results as to how multi-cultural identities are shaped. Simon (1996: 135) also notices the importance of paying more attention in Cultural Studies to the material reality of translation rather than using it only as a metaphor:
The highly metaphorical language used to describe translation hides an insensitivity to the realities of languages in today's world. AngloAmerican gender and cultural studies have been abundantly nourished through translations, and yet they rarely look critically at the translation practices through which they have come into being. Confidently conducted mainly in English, these studies give little attention to the specific languages of intellectual and cultural commerce in the world today. It is time, then, that attention turn to translation as a pivotal mechanism in creating and transmitting cultural values.
In her article Bassnett (cf.1998: 138) mentions a series of areas in which the cooperation between Cultural and Translation Studies could become more manifest, directions that are synthesized below: o investigation of the acculturation process that takes place between cultures and the way in which different cultures construct their image of writers and texts; o more comparative study of the ways in which texts become cultural capital (i.e. become part of the
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education of a cultural elite, o. n.) across cultural boundaries; o much more research into the politics of translating and, from a more didactic stance, o a pooling of resources to extend research into intercultural training and the implications of such training in today's world. The problem with Bassnett's translation turn in Cultural Studies is that she is quite vague about the kind of relationship between the two disciplines that she has in view. Is it a relationship between equal partners? By stating that linguistics has also undergone its own cultural turn (ibid.: 133 my emphasis), Bassnett seems to relegate the linguistic component of Translation Studies to linguistics and, at the same time, to limit Translation Studies to its literary / cultural component. Or does she envisage, in view of the internationalization process, the actual incorporation of this side of Translation Studies into Cultural Studies? Jeremy Munday reads such turns as an attempt by Cultural Studies to colonize the less established field of Translation Studies (2001:139), whereas Edwin Gentzler, who prefaces the 1998 volume, simply claims that for Bassnett the moment has come for the two disciplines to jump off their parallel track and join together. (1998: xx) Leaving further speculations aside, as beyond the scope of this discussion, it is quite clear that Cultural Studies could benefit a lot from the research undertaken in Translation Studies as an integrated discipline in its own right in the same way as it has drawn on other disiciplines (sociology, ethnography, etc.) in its examination of translation-related cultural issues. On the other hand, Translation Studies deals with translations, which are intercultural events. As such, it could play a more significant part, in view of its importance, in all kinds of cultural debates, in investigations of the reception of foreign literary works and, in general, in any form of intercultural communication in which translation is involved.
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It is necessary to include translated literature in the polysystem. This is rarely done, but no observer of the history of any literature can avoid recognizing as an important fact the impact of translations and their role in the synchrony and diachrony of a certain literature. (Itamar Even-Zohar) Translations are facts of target cultures; on occasion facts of a special status, sometimes even constituting identifiable (sub)systems of their own, but of target culture in any event. (Gideon Toury)
The original and outstanding contribution of the School of Tel Aviv to the evolution of Translation Studies in the 1970's consists in the elaboration of the polysystem theory, by Itamar Even-Zohar, a theorist of culture who purports to describe not only the functioning of literary systems, to which translations belong, but also of more comprehensive cultural systems. In his turn, Gideon Toury, a translation scholar from Tel Aviv, adopts and enriches Even-Zohar's polysystem theory, studying in more detail translations in the target culture, detecting and classifying translation norms, and reaching generalizations of a higher order in an influential (and ambitious) theory of translation. This new dynamic theory should be seen as a reaction against the static prescriptive models that had dominated the discipline in previous periods and as a successful attempt to account for the role that translations have played in the development of literatures and cultures.
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Itamar Even-Zohar: the place and functions of translations in the literary polysystem
The roots of Even-Zohars polysystem theory can be found in the Russian Formalism of the 1920's, particularly in the works of Jurij Tynjanov. The Russian Formalist used system as a flexible notion to denote a multi-layered structure of elements which relate to and interact with each other. (Shuttleworth 1998: 176) A system could thus refer not only to individual works but also to genres, traditions and ultimately to broader contexts, such as the social one. Even-Zohar expands Tynjanov's study of the hierarchical literary system in order to relate it to the larger cultural polysystem, which also comprises other polysystems (artistic, political, religious, etc.). In Even-Zohar's theory the term polysystem replaces system in order to emphasize the idea of system as a dynamic and heterogeneous notion. The dynamic quality refers to the continuous evolution of the system, whereas heterogeneity has in view the diversity of elements (competing works and norms) of which the system is made up. Moreover, as Theo Hermans (1999: 107) shows,
The central idea of polysystem theory, as of all system theories, is relational. Not only are elements viewed in relation to other elements, but they derive their value from their position in a network. The relations which an element entertains with other elements are what constitutes its function or value. In that sense such theories are functionalist.
In the description of the literary polysystem Even-Zohar draws on a series of contrasting pairs which operate in it. They are: o canonized vs. non-canonized forms coexisting in the polysystem. By canonized forms Even-Zohar means those literary norms and works () which are accepted as legitimate by the dominant circles within a culture and whose conspicuous products are preserved by the community to become part of its historical heritage. (1990: 15) Canonized texts occupy a central position at one particular time in history. However, besides literary masterpieces and norms governing
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their creation, Even-Zohar's heterogeneous polysystem also includes low literary products (popular fiction, children's literature, etc.), which are not generally taken into account by traditional literary studies and hold a marginal position. The Israeli scholar is among the first to adopt a new non-elitist and non-prescriptive approach to literature, realizing that canonicity is not an inherent feature of texts but is ascribed to them by people and institutions. (cf. Hermans 1999: 107) Among other things, the evolution of the polysystem is determined precisely by the struggle of such marginal forms to reach positions closer to those of the canonized ones. o the polysystem's centre vs. its periphery In Even-Zohar's view, the centre or nucleus of the polysystem is identical with the most prestigious canonized repertoire. By repertoire he means the aggregate of laws and elements that govern the production of texts. (1990: 17) A repertoire consists, therefore, of much more than just literary texts. The non-canonized repertoire tends to occupy peripheral positions, but there is always a competition between such forms to reach the centre. o primary (innovative) vs. secondary (conservative) forms This dichotomy accounts for both the dynamic quality of the polysystem as well as for its historical dimension. When primary (innovative) forms become canonized and are accepted into the centre, they first lead to the augmentation and structuration of a repertoire. (1990: 21) In less technical terms, they contribute to the invigoration of a literature and a culture. However, after some time, they will tend to become increasingly conservative, in their confrontation with other competing forms. Secondary positions first lead to the consolidation of forms in the literary polysystem, then to their mummification. An important contribution that Even-Zohar made both in literary theory and in Translation Studies is his incorporation of translations into the literary and cultural polysystems. Literary translations form a system of their own, which is acknowledged as such in view of:
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the principles according to which works are selected for translation, principles that are imposed by a dominant poetics. The main reason for choosing texts for translation is by virtue of their compatibility with the new forms needed by a polysystem in order to achieve a complete, dynamic, homogeneous identity. (Gentzler 1993: 118) Ultimately, the particular socioliterary conditions of a receiving culture will determine the texts that will have priority in translation. o the tendency for translated texts to conform to the literary norms of the target system (Even-Zohar 1990: 45-6), an aspect which is developed in more detail by Gideon Toury. In Even-Zohar's view, translations may occupy both primary and secondary positions depending on the configuration of the literary and cultural polysystems in a particular historical moment. This stance distinguishes the Israeli scholar's theory from traditional approaches, in which translations were assigned only a secondary place. When translations hold primary positions within a culture, they are supposed to create innovatory forms and models. According to Even-Zohar, there are three social circumstances that may encourage the primary position of translations: o when a young literature is established and looks to older literatures for its models; this is, for instance, the case of Israel which, for specific socio-political reasons, had to rely heavily on translations in order to build up its own literature in Hebrew. This could also be the case with 19th century Central and Eastern European cultures (e. g. Czech, Romanian) which resorted to larger and older cultures (French, German) in order to import new literary genres; o when a literature is either peripheral or weak a very common case for smaller nations, like, for instance, the Low Countries, which cannot produce all o
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the kinds of writing a larger system can, and have to import new forms and ideas by means of translations; o when there are turning points, crises or literary vacuums in a literature. One such example is the American literature of the 1960s. Its canonized models were no longer tenable for a younger generation, who had to turn to other literatures for new ideas and forms. As Even-Zohar shows, translation in a primary position is not only a medium through which new ideas can be imported. It may actually become a form of writing used by creative authors in their native language. When translations hold a secondary position, which is usually the case with all great literatures, they only reinforce already existing models, generally assuming the quality of epigonic writing. (1978: 121) Thus, paradoxically, translation, which is usually related to new ideas and forms of expression, protects, in such circumstances, conservative values. Nevertheless, the flexibility of the polysystem and its stratification makes it possible for translated literature to hold both primary and secondary positions. Even-Zohar's example is that of the Hebrew literary polysystem between the two world wars when translations from Russian were primary, whereas translations from English, German and Polish were secondary. (ibid.: 122) Finally, Even-Zohar suggests possible connections between the position of translation in the polysystem and the strategies translators use. If translations hold a primary position, then translators feel less constrained to use target culture literary models and introduce innovation by exploring source text relations. Thus, the borders between the source text and the target text tend to be diffuse, and the relationship between the source text and its translation is one of adequacy. This term will be further developed by Gideon Toury. On the other hand, if translations hold a secondary place, translators will attempt to conform to the norms and models of the target culture.
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The polysystem theory is important for the development of Translation Studies and, more precisely, for the cultural turn in the discipline in many ways: Being a theory that allows for its own augmentation (Gentzler 1993: 120), it considerably broadens the area of investigation of translations, relating them to wider literary and cultural contexts and phenomena as well as to socio-cultural practices that operate at particular times in history, and thus o draws attention to the practical and intellectual needs which translations might be trying to fill; (Hermans 1999: 110) o provides a way of connecting translations with an array of other factors in addition to source texts; (ibid.) o places canonized products and models in relation to a more fluid and pluriform periphery, making it possible for traditionally neglected texts and forms to come into view; (Hermans 1999: 118) o introduces an absolutely necessary historical dimension which accounts for the evolution of the polysystem and relativizes the norms and constraints operating in cultures. Being a non-prescriptive, relational approach it leads to o a reconsideration of the concept of translation itself which, in Even-Zohar's words, is no longer a phenomenon whose nature and borders are given once and for all, but an activity dependent on the relations within a certain cultural system; (1990: 51) o a reconsideration of the concept of equivalence as long as translation scholars are free to focus on the translated text as an entity existing in the target polysystem in its own right; (Shuttleworth 1998: 178) o an expansion of the theoretical boundaries of traditional translation theory based all too frequently on linguistic models or undeveloped literary theories.
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In this way Translation Studies could finally advance beyond prescriptive aesthetics. (Gentzler 1993: 125) At the same time, the main limits of the theory spring precisely from its formalist and structuralist roots. Edwin Gentzler, for instance, objects to it the tendency for overgeneralization, which is insufficiently supported by evidence:
Since the goal of structural theories is to establish the rules and laws which govern any given system, to find the deep structure of the surface manifestation being investigated () Even-Zohar reads the text of the cultural fabric and tries to discover those rules which regulate the system of cultural heterogeneity, the polysystem. In doing so, he raises the Formalist approach to a higher degree: his theory becomes a formalism of forms. Although he assumes that literary systems are composed of multiple differing systems and constantly undergo change, at the core of his theory is a concept of a totally integrated and meaningful whole. () The first problem, which he recognizes, is his tendency to propose universals based on very little evidence. A more extensive analysis of textual and cultural relations must take place before universals can be persuasively posited. The contradictions in his own data demonstrate the ephemeral nature of many of his hypotheses and tend to distort the theoretical importance of what he is trying to articulate. (1993: 120-123)
In more concrete terms, Hermans analyzes Even-Zohar's (1990) ten such governing laws that he finds self-evident and problematic (cf. 1999: 111), and thus in total disproportion with their assumed generalizing force. Besides, Even-Zohar's formalism of forms leaves an impression of lifelessness and abstractedness, despite the multiplicity of the socio-cultural relations it purports to examine and the heterogeneity and dynamism that characterize the polysystem. In a truly formalist / structuralist vein, the polysystem theory focuses on systems and structures, classifications, correlations, repertoires as well as on contrasting pairs, overshadowing in this way not only the links with real life but also the complexity of the phenomena, which, in this theory, are limited to the eitheror logic of binarism.
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This does in no way diminish the importance of this theory. According to Mona Baker,
Prior to the development of the polysystem approach, studying translation often consisted of an evaluative comparison of source and target texts, in isolation from both source and target contexts of literary production. Even-Zohar's work effected a shift away from this treatment of translated texts as isolated elements and towards a historical and social understanding of the way they function collectively, as a sub-system within the target literary system. One of the main achievements of polysystem theory then has been to shift attention from the relationship between individual source and target texts and towards the relationships which exist among the target texts themselves. (1998: 163)
The polysystem theory has supported and fuelled in a substantial manner subsequent research in the field of Translation Studies and contains potential for further developments. Through the concept of (poly)system broader extraliterary (social, cultural, economic, political) contexts that are related to translation may be examined thus enriching a theory which encourages growth and might otherwise look as too simplistic. The Manipulation School, which emphasizes the ideological dimension of translation, is one such broadening of perspective. Many other studies have made use of the polysystem framework in order to carry out (historical) research on the status of translations in different cultures. However, the translation scholar who has most built on Even-Zohar's polysystem theory is Gideon Toury.
replaced by Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond (1995), an updated and more comprehensive investigation of translation. Making use of Holmess map of Translation Studies (see ANNEX 1), Toury assigns a pivotal position to Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS), the main goal of which is to describe, explain and predict phenomena relating to translation. (1995: 1) As an empirical branch, DTS describes a well-defined corpus of translations in a target culture, detects sets of problems, so that case studies can test, refute, modify and amend theory in whose name research is carried out. (ibid.) Therefore, instead of indulging in the abstractions of a deductive approach, the researchers task is, for the time being, to proceed inductively and describe facts of real life rather than preconceived hypotheses. (ibid.) The emphasis on description implies, of course, the rejection of the previous prescriptive approaches, which relied on intuition and insight instead of systematically starting from consistent evidence of the translators' behaviour. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond aims precisely to accumulate and describe such regularities of behaviour. The following step, the beyond in the title is, however, to draw more general implications of such descriptions, to establish translation laws, and thus direct research towards the pure theoretical area on Holmes's map. What clearly distinguishes Toury's perspective from other approaches is his insistence on the fact that translations are facts of target culture. Hence the necessity for locating the position in the system of the target literature and culture. In fact, what Toury proposes is a methodology consisting of a three-phase discovery procedures in describing translations, in order to make generalizations about them, which may well turn into justification procedures when applying these generalizations to other translated texts. These phases are (ibid.: 38): a) the integration of the translated text in the socio-cultural context of the target culture, considering its acceptability, textual-linguistic phenomena, etc. b) the establishment of a corresponding source text and the mapping of the target text (or parts of it, or phenomena
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occurring in it) on the source text. This involves, among other things, the determination of the source text's status as appropriate; the establishment of target-source relationships for individual coupled pairs. Such relationships may be established at the textual level or between smaller textual segments. c) the formulation of first-level generalizations. They refer to: primary vs. secondary relationships for the text as a whole1; preferred invariants and translation units; [reconstructed] process of translation. In order to reach higher level generalizations, these procedures need to be applied on a great number of texts so as to build a corpus. Therefore, a further step in Toury's methodology consists of the following operations: a') Extending the corpus; b') Going through the previous b) for every additional text; c') Striving for higher-level generalizations + explanations for a certain translator, school of translators, period, culture, etc., depending on the principle(s) underlying the extended corpus. (ibid.: 39) When making these considerations Toury had already written a sociological study of the cultural conditions in which foreign novels were translated into Hebrew between 1930-1945. Later on this study came to include children's literature as well. While working on the mapping of the target text(s) on the source text(s) step b) Toury's aim was to discover the decisions translators made during the translation process through the examinations of the shifts between
The primary relationship is established if the source text is the original work, the secondary one if it is itself a translation. (o. n.) 44
the source and the target texts1. As Gentzler shows (1993: 126-127), in his study Toury concludes that there were few linguistic changes for the period under discussion. There were, instead, textual ones regarding word choices and style and accounting for the tendency of the translations to make use of a more elevated style than the originals. What Toury also discovered was that the texts for translation were selected by the Hebrew (target) culture not primarily for aesthetic reasons but rather for ideological or didactic ones, and also by accident. On the other hand, those texts that were selected on literary / aesthetic grounds tended to occupy, in keeping with EvenZohar's theory, a central position in the Hebrew polysystem. Toury's corpus of texts also testified to the fact that, despite the high number of incompatibilities between translations of the same source, and despite mistranslations that comparisons of target texts to their source texts highlighted, translations were accepted and functioned as such in the target culture. Working from the target culture perspective, Tourys view of translation is extremely broad, including free adaptations and even pseudo-translations. The latter, he argues, are legitimate objects of study. Until the mystification is dispelled the way [pseudotranslations] function within a culture is no different from the way genuine translations do. (ibid.: 34) Moreover, the centuries old issue of the translators' lack of faithfulness to the source is no longer deplored by the Israeli scholar, but is motivated by their wish to make their translations culturally acceptable for their readers. In spite of the strong target orientation of Toury's approach, the relationship between translations and their source texts remains an uneasy one. The most problematic area is the mapping of the target texts onto the source texts the phase b) of his discovery procedures. The comparison of translations to their originals
Translation shifts are small linguistic changes occurring in translation of source texts to target texts. (Munday 2001: 55) They are central to the work of the Czechoslovakian scholar Anton Popovi, for whom such shifts could well have aesthetic reasons. 45
1
inevitably entails a discussion on the status of equivalence in his theory, and on the Israeli scholar's indecision with regard to this concept. On the one hand, from a target perspective, equivalence is seen as a purely empirical matter that varies in keeping with the variety of target cultures and the ideas about translations (translation norms) that operate in a target culture at particular times in history. Moreover, Toury rises against those source-oriented deductive theories that postulate and prescribe an ideal, abstract, static equivalence between source and target texts against which all translations are evaluated. On the other hand, in his earlier works Toury introduced an ideal invariant third text, the adequate translation against which the comparison between the target text and its source takes place. This adequate translation is built on abstract literary and linguistic theory and it is used as the invariant of the comparison (i.e. as a tertium comparationis). (1980: 49, emphasis in the original). This contradiction in Toury's theory, his return to a static and abstract form against which equivalence is measured have been sharply criticized (e.g. Vanderauwera 1982; Gentzler 1993; Hermans 1999). As Gentzler notes,
On the one hand, Toury posits the premise that every literary system is different from every other in terms of its structure and norms of usage; on the other hand, he suggests that the same structural universal form underlies two different language systems. This is the crux of the theoretical debate within current translation theory, and Toury adopts both positions. How is this possible? (1993: 132, emphasis in the original)
In Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond (p. 86), Toury drops the tertium comparationis but retains equivalence which, this time, is not
one target-source relationship at all, establishable on the basis of a particular type of invariant. Rather, it is a functional-relational concept; namely, that set of relationships which will have been found to distinguish appropriate from inappropriate modes of translation performance for the culture in question.
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In practice, this distinction between appropriate and inappropriate forms implies a selection from among all the target-source possible relationships, which constitute potential equivalence and is thus relegated to the theoretical branch of the discipline (see Holmes's map, ANNEX 1), of an actual (or realized) equivalence, which is located in DTS. By insisting to retain, in an increasingly roundabout manner, the concept of equivalence in his methodology Toury seems to cling to a term that actually limits the broadness of his scope and (theoretically) subverts his very flexible view of translation. Fortunately, the assortment of case studies in Part Three of the book shows (pseudo)translations actually operating and bringing about important changes in target cultures and literatures. Here translations and writings functioning as translations are contextualized in the culture to which they belong. Pseudotranslations and their significance, justification of the use of the coupled pairs in Hebrew literature (in Pairs of Replacing + Replaced Segments), how the sonnet came to be (re)incorporated into Hebrew literature (Between a 'Golden Poem' and a Shakespearian Sonnet), the degree of tolerance target cultures may show towards indirect/secondary translations (i.e. translations of translations), what is regarded as literary by a target culture, a tentative reconstruction of a translation process (A Translation Comes into Being) are some of the important issues Toury approaches in his case studies. However, his main aim is to recover, in keeping with the tenets of DTS, regularities of the translators' behaviour, which testify to the existence at a particular time, in a particular target culture of norms in translation. The cornerstone of Toury's approach to translation is his introduction, for the first time in Translation Studies, of the influential, useful and productive concept of norm. The study of norms emphasizes the fact that translation is an activity bearing cultural significance and it assigns to Toury's theory a strong cultural dimension. Subsequently other scholars, not necessarily using the polysystem framework, have expanded and enriched Toury's findings.
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Norms in translation
The study of norms in DTS has nothing to do with their presence in the prescriptive traditional translation discourse. In that context, norms acted as guidelines that translators had to follow so as to produce what the authors of such discourses regarded as the right translations. In DTS norms are related to viewing translation as a decision making process. This perspective first occurred in the works of the Czechoslovakian Structuralist scholars Ji Lev (1967) and Anton Popovi (1970). Lev emphasizes the fact that at every level the translator has to choose one option from several possible alternatives, and this decision process implies compulsory choices in the case of language specific grammatical forms and non-compulsory ones, which translators could still make on a regular basis. Popovi explains the translators' tendency to make options of the latter type through the presence, in the source text and target culture, of linguistic and discursive conventions that they can choose between. On the one hand, there are translational choices that translators make by reading the source text, on the other such choices may be dictated by the specific expectations of the readers in the target culture that translators are well aware of. When such options are made regularly, they become patterns and may, in their turn, have a bearing on the readers' expectations. One could thus infer the existence of norms through the examination of such fixed regular patterns in translation. Toury's description and classification of norms Starting from the premises provided by the Czechoslovakian Structuralist school, Toury develops a tripartite model of norms that are shown to occupy the intermediate level between laws and idiosyncrasies. In a community, norms are acquired during the socialization process and, when they are effective, one can distinguish regularity of behaviour in recurrent situations of the same type. (1978: 84) From a sociological view point Toury defines norms as
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the translation of general values or ideas shared by a community as to what is right and wrong, adequate and inadequate into specific performance instructions appropriate for and applicable to particular situations. (1995: 55)
Norms are regarded as performance instructions both in the social context of the target culture (what people expect to be a proper translation under particular circumstances) and in regulating the translators' linguistic options. Thus Toury (ibid.: 56-61) sees different kinds of norms operating during the translation process: the initial norm in translation involves the translator's basic choice between adhering to the norms realized in the source text (which reflect the norms in the source language and culture ) or to those of the target language and culture. If the translator adheres to source norms (s)he will produce what Toury calls an adequate translation1, if (s)he chooses to make use of target norms, the result will be an acceptable translation. However, these alternatives represent extremes and translators usually compromise between them. Initial norms are called this way because they logically precede the others and determine the choice of the other norms; preliminary norms concern two distinct, yet related aspects: the translation policy in a receiving culture, which may favour the selection for translation of specific authors, works, schools, genres from a source culture and, we could add, forbid other texts at particular times in history; the decision whether to translate directly from the original language (direct translations) or to translate from an intermediate language; whereas there are target cultures which are more tolerant in this respect, and accept what Toury
This is Toury's terminology and, as has frequently been noticed (e.g. Chesterman 1997, Hermans 1996, 1999) it may create confusion. Other scholars refer to adequacy in translation in a more general sense relating it, for instance, to notions of correctness. It has also been objected to because of the prescriptive connotations of the terms adequate and acceptable. (e.g. Gentzler 1993) 49
1
calls indirect/secondary translations, some cultural communities do not allow this. Hermans (1999: 76) also adds among preliminary norms the decision to translate into the native or into a second or third language. operational norms refer to those translational norms which direct actual decisions made during the translating process itself. (Toury 1980: 54) They are of two types: matricial norms: govern the macro-structure of the text and relate to issues such as how much of a text is translated, if its divisions into chapters, stanzas, paragraphs, in other words its textual segmentation, should be changed as a result of omissions or additions; textual-linguistic norms: which operate at the micro-level of sentence structure, lexical choice, punctuation, etc. In spite of their helpfulness in integrating translations among the socio-cultural forms of communication and their frequent use in empirical studies, norms are, in fact, difficult to detect. Difficulties are further increased when it comes to corpora covering longer periods of time. Moreover, Toury warns about making a distinction between the norms themselves and the statements about norms (cf. 1995: 65). He suggests that norms could be reconstructed from two kinds of sources: a) textual: the translated texts themselves as products of the norm-governed activity; by examining the relationships between source and target texts the translators' regularities of behaviour are noticeable and thus norms may be inferred; b) extratextual: the explicit statements about norms made by translators, publishers, editors, critics, reviewers, etc., as by-products of the existence and the activity of norms. They could nevertheless be partial and biased and need to be checked by the researcher by means of textual evidence.
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Hermans (1999: 85-90) provides in more detail other sources and principles which may guide the researcher in his/her quest for norms, emphasizing, at the same time, their ideological dimension: 1) Canonized models and borderline cases. For canonized models this implies the examination of the translations which are held up as examples to follow, that were awarded prizes, etc. Such translations or references to them can be spotted not only by reading translation reviews but also in translation textbooks, anthologies, or by noticing that a particular translation was frequently republished. The borderline cases are easier to handle because they tend to lay bare the constitutive norm of translation, i.e. what is taken to be the difference between translation and adjacent fields like adaptation, imitation, parody. Such a borderline norm refers, for instance, to practising phonological translations (e.g. the translation of Catullus by Louis and Celia Zukofsky). 2) Selectivity and exclusion. This principle relates to considering translation as a decision making process and may have in view both preliminary and operational norms (more general translation policies and the translations as such). Reading texts oppositionally by highlighting the exclusions, the paths that were open but that were not chosen, may allow us to glimpse the agenda behind the choices that are made (e.g. the non-translation of Shakespeare in contemporary India, translations from German into Yiddish of 19th century children's books). 3) Discursive stances. They refer to whether or not a target culture is prepared to adapt the foreign elements of a source culture, its otherness, a thing that may also affect the translators' decisions (e.g. dubbing and subtitling in different countries as expressions of underlying ideological positions).
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Although Toury considers that norms act as constraints on the translators, and therefore have a prescriptive dimension, his aim is, in keeping with the whole orientation of the DTS framework, to describe and not to impose their use. Toury's research of norms was subsequently expanded and refined by other scholars who further highlighted their socioprofessional valences (Hermans 1996, 1999; Chesterman 1993, 1997; Nord 1991).
Chesterman also shows that sometimes particularly in the case of literary translations, but also in other cases (e.g. advertisements) translators deliberately go against the expectancy norms. This may happen because they have other priorities on their agenda, such as: to show more loyalty to some aspect of the form of the source text, to highlight a particular ideological conviction or, we may add, a particular ideological aspect existing in the source text, to produce a more persuasive text or simply to shock the readers and thus elicit a stronger response to their translations (e.g. advertisements). The consistent flouting of one norm may lead, in time, to the appearance of another. Thus, expectancy norms are open to change and, at the same time, highly sensitive to the genres and text-types to which they belong. For instance, the expectancy norms that may work for the translation of novels are different from those governing the translation of a business letter. b) Professional norms are norms deriving from the texts produced by professionals. Professionals are acknowledged as such from among those people who translate literary and non-literary texts in a given culture. Professional norms are validated partly by norm authorities (e.g. professionals and professional bodies) and partly by their very existence. In this order of ideas, such kind of norms can be easily found in the Translator's Charter or in any other programmatic document regulating the activity of professional translators' associations. These norms, which Chesterman hypothesizes and describes, exert a prescriptive pressure on translators and, insofar as they have been internalized, they help to account for translational behaviour. The professional norms that Chesterman finds to govern the process of translation are: 1. the accountability norm. This is an ethical norm, dealing with the professional standards of integrity and thoroughness. The translator will accept responsibility for the work produced for the translation commissioner and, more generally, for his/her readers.
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2. the communication norm. This is a social norm dealing with the translators efforts to ensure maximum communication between the parties involved in the communicative process: the author and his/her readers. 3. the relation norm. This is a linguistic norm dealing with the relation between source text and target text. Instead of referring to this relation in terms of equivalence Chesterman suggests other criteria (text-type, wishes of the commissioner, readers needs, authors intentions, etc.) Moreover, as Chesterman considers that the ultimate objective of norms is the promotion of certain values that permit social behaviour, he correlates both expectancy and professional norms with particular values, on which they appear to focus. Thus, in his opinion, expectancy norms favour the value of clarity that readers expect to find in any translation, the relation norm promotes truth as the governing value for the relationship between source texts and their translations, the accountability norm has in view the value of trust that readers invest translators with, and the communication norm the understanding that lies at the basis of any successful communication. Even if such connections may seem somehow speculative, they nevertheless testify to the authors wish to encompass, in the model that he offers, the diversity of norms and the complex ways in which they function in culture and society.
fact, according to her definition, conventions are specific realizations of norms. (1991: 96) Nord distinguishes between constitutive and regulatory conventions, which share in common with Chesterman's product and process norms. Constitutive conventions are what a particular culture community accepts as a translation (as opposed to an adaptation, version or other forms of intercultural text transfer). (ibid.: 100) The sum total of these conventions accounts for the general concept of translation prevailing in a particular culture community, i.e. what the users of translations expect from a text which is pragmatically marked as a translation. (ibid., my emphasis) Regulative conventions are embedded in the constitutive ones and refer to the generally accepted forms of handling certain translation problems below the text rank. (ibid.) Nord provides as examples proper names, culture-bound realities, quotations, etc., i.e. areas in which translation practice varies from culture to culture.
Importance of norms
The notion of norm has been a key concept for the development of Translation Studies and its cultural turn. Gideon Toury, the translation scholar who introduces the notion of norms in this discipline provides a classification of norms mainly operating in the target culture, where translations belong. However, in his initial norm, what he calls adequate translations refer to the translators' making use of norms present in the source text. His use of norms assigns a strong socio-cultural dimension to his approach, which enables him to explain not only translational but also literary and cultural phenomena. Culture itself is no longer seen as an important factor in the translation process. It is a polysystem in itself and as such produces the socio-literary norms which govern translation. Tourys orientation replaces ahistorical and aesthetic interpretations by realistic presentations of the way in which translations function within the target culture and of the reasons for which they have come to occupy primary or secondary positions in the polysystem.
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Toury himself provides numerous case-studies from Hebrew literature, which is one of the best illustrations of the ways in which translations can invigorate and cause changes in a target culture literature, filling in gaps, still having to submit to the socio-literary norms that function there. The presence of socio-cultural norms in describing translations is a most welcome broadening of the framework of translation analysis, which has sometimes been excessively limited to linguistic and textual explanations. The relativization of translations, characterized by variability as a result of differences across cultures, by variation within a culture and change over time, as well as their contextualization are extremely pertinent aspects in this theory, which tries both to capture the diversity of phenomena occurring in a culture and explain this diversity through the norms governing the translator's activity and through more general laws. Mona Baker (1998: 165) underlines the importance of norms for the development of a new most challenging direction in Translation Studies, corpus-translations, which, in keeping with the formalist line of Toury's work, has been using corpora to do research on important issues, such as finding features that distinguish translations from other writings, i. e. universals of translations:
the concept of norms assumes that the primary object of analysis in translation studies is not an individual translation but a coherent corpus of translated texts. Hence the (far-reaching) consequences in terms of providing an explicit definition of the object of study in the discipline and providing a basis for a relevant research programme.
Although Chesterman and Nord do not use a (poly)systemic framework for their respective approaches, they have further developed the investigation of norms and brought it closer to the social reality of translations in target cultures. Hermans (cf. 1999: 79) also suggests other angles from which norms could be explored: besides regarding them as constraints, they could also act as templates in offering ready-made solutions to particular kinds of problems.
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The use of norms has been quite productive in a lot of empirical research aiming to show how translation norms function in the history of different target cultures. Their study has had important consequences for translator training, translation criticism and translation assessment.
This is a semantically more complex and formally more concise way of expressing the (predictable) target culture orientation of a translation. In the process of translation, Toury argues, the dissolution
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of the original set of textual relations is inevitable and can never be fully recreated. Moreover, Toury suggests that age, extent of bilingualism, the knowledge and experience of the translator as well as the status of the translation within the target culture may influence the operation of this law. Taking account of the last factor in this enumeration, the law of growing standardization could be reformulated as follows:
the more peripheral [the status of the translation in a particular culture], the more translation will accommodate itself to established models and repertoires. (ibid.: 271)
Translation corpora have supported the validity of this law (e.g. Vanderauwera 1985) and, as will be seen, ideological approaches to translation provide evidence of the fact that major cultures, in which translations occupy a secondary position, such as the Anglo-American culture, tend to favour target-oriented translations (e.g. Venuti 1995). The law of interference is related to the previous one, and reads as follows:
In translation phenomena pertaining to the make up of the source text tend to be transferred to the target text. (ibid.: 275)
As Sara Laviosa shows (cf. 1998: 291), from a psycholinguistic perspective, the operation of this law depends on the particular manner in which the source text is processed as well as on the professional experience of the translator and on the sociocultural conditions in which a translation is produced and consumed. At the same time, as in the previous case, cultural asymmetries also come into discussion, so that
tolerance of interference () tends to increase when translation is carried out from a major or highly prestigious language / culture, especially if the target language / culture is minor, or weak in any other sense. (Toury 1995: 278)
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In fact, both laws send us back to Tourys idea that a translation cannot be completely oriented either towards the source text and culture or to the target ones. Toury's attempted laws have given rise to a series of objections from translation scholars, some of which refer to: Toury's tendency which applies, in fact, to all the scholars who have adopted a (poly)systemic view of translation to overgeneralize from case studies without sufficient evidence (Gentzler 1993); whether it is actually possible to formulate laws of an activity which draws on so many variables as translation (Hermans 1999: 92); the fact that the two laws are also to some extent contradictory, or at least pull in different directions: the law of growing standardization depicts target languageoriented norms, while the law of interference is source text-oriented (Munday 2001: 117). Whether Tourys laws are ultimately acknowledged as such by translation theorists depends on the definition which they are prepared to give to this category and on the pertinence of such laws for their research. If Toury's laws not his whole approach, though have been of little relevance to the scholars from the literary side, they have served as stepping stones to scholars working in the area of corpus translation, who are now focusing on the discovery of translation universals (e.g. Baker 1998; Laviosa 1998).
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cultures that became popular among readers? How do you explain this popularity? 5. a) Choose a translated literary work and try to decide, according to Toury's definition of initial norms, whether the translation is (predominantly) adequate or acceptable. Account for your decision. b) In terms of the preliminary norms working for the text you have chosen, try to find out whether there was any particular (state and/or publishing house) translation policy when the text was published that might have had a bearing on the translator's choices: were translations encouraged? What literary genres were preferred? What authors? How does your text relate to this policy? Is your text a direct or indirect translation? Does this make any difference? c) In order to detect operational norms compare the translation to its source text and decide whether the general structure of the text has been changed (chapters, sections, paragraphs, etc.), and whether there are additions or omissions to it (matricial norms). Look more closely at the translation of 1-2 paragraphs in order to see whether there are more radical changes in terms of sentence structure, lexical choices, punctuation, etc. A suggested fragment is provided below:
He pushed open the latchless door of the porch and passed through the naked hallway into the kitchen. A group of his brothers and sisters were sitting round the table. Tea was nearly over and only the last of the second watered tea remained in the bottoms of the small glassjars and jampots which did service for teacups. Discarded crusts and Deschise ua fr de clan a verandei mpingnd-o i trecu prin vestibulul nud n buctrie. Un grup parte din fraii i surorile lui edea mprejurul mesei. Ora ceaiului era aproape de sfrit i pe fundul castronaelor de sticl i borcnaelor de marmelad ce slujeau drept ceti nu mai rmseser dect ultimele resturi din ceaiul
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lumps of sugared bread, turned brown by the tea which had been poured over them, lay scattered on the table. Little wells of tea lay here and there on the board and a knife with a broken ivory handle was stuck through the pith of a ravaged turnover.
pentru a doua oar oprit. Coji lepdate i bucele de pine tvlite n zahr i devenite cafenii din ceaiul turnat peste ele zceau risipite pe mas. Ici-colo se adunaser pe scndura mesei minuscule bltoace de ceai i un cuit cu mnerul de filde frnt era nfipt n lemnul spongios al unei tblii pliante ce suferise ravagii. James Joyce, Portret al artistului n tineree (transl. by Frida Papadache 1969: 254-255)
6. Read the following excerpts from some Romanian critics' notes on translation and refer to the translation norms which worked for the period when the texts were written that are implied or directly expressed: (Pre-Communist Period) The final purpose of a translated literary work is to arouse in the reader similar artistic emotions, the same spiritual elevation that was achieved, in the source text, by the untranslatable expression. This means recreation and re-creation is, therefore, the price that has to be paid for a betrayal of the original through original means of expression. (Mircea Vulcnescu, 1932, my translation) This wave of translations serves but also betrays English literature. Translations are bad, since they are undertaken by people with no qualification or responsibility, who do not know either English or Romanian. Special studies should be devoted to their comparison with the original texts. (Mihail Sebastian, 1939, my translation)
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The publishers try to please ordinary readers by casting English or American novels on the market, some of which are good, others mediocre () The translations are dreadful in most of the cases. (George Clinescu, 1947, my translation) (Communist Period) The institutionalization of translation led to the achievement of a corpus of translations as a result of logical, conscious and mature coordination. It also led to the setting up of a group of (professional) translators and critics of foreign literature that could best meet the needs for competence and analysis of this phenomenon. (Gelu Ionescu, 1981, my translation)
7. Read the following excerpt from a translator's preface and discuss the translation norms that the translator mentions: If I were to compare Geoge Cobuc with an English poet, I would unhesitatingly name Robert Burns, the national bard of Scotland. () What is really useful to translators is the comparability of [their] texts; in other words, what I would call poetic synonymy. () The translator cannot be indifferent to the existence of a [model]; for it reassures him that he is on the right path, that the message of the poet is thus apt to be more transmissible. I have considered it necessary to dwell on [this] at a time when the so-called free, or (oh dear!) creative translations seem to gain ill-deserved currency. And in the case of poetry () I think we are, all of us, in duty bound not to accept with levity the deliberate distortion of their melody and harmony. The deeply musical Edgar Allan Poe went to the length of defining poetry as the rhythmical creation of beauty. (Leon D. Levichi, The Translator's Viewpoint preface to his translation of George Cobuc's poems, 1980) 8. Although the polysystem theory mainly discusses literary texts, the study of norms concerns non-literary texts as well. Look at the
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fragment below and its translation and try to establish the regulative conventions / norms (cf. Nord 1991) relating to proper names.
Teatrul cel Mare din Cetatea lui Bucur i-a nlat cortina pentru prima oar n 1852, anul cnd a sosit n lume i cel mai mare dramaturg romn al tuturor timpurilor, Ion Luca Caragiale. Nu ntmpltor, Naionalul bucuretean poart pe frontispiciu numele nemuritor al scriitorului. De-a lungul timpului, lumea lui Nenea Iancu s-a perindat pe scena Teatrului Naional, nsufleit de cei mai mari actori ai scenei romnetiAnul dublu aniversar va aduce pe afiul primei scene a rii trei capodopere mereu actuale: O noapte furtunoas, n regia lui Felix Alexa, O scrisoare pierdut, n regia lui Grigore Gona i D'ale carnavalului, n viziunea lui Gelu Colceag. The Big Theater of the City of Bucur first raised its curtains in 1852, the year when the greatest Romanian playwright of all times, Ion Luca Caragiale, was born. It is no coincidence that Bucharest's National Theater bears the name of the undying writer, affectionately known as Nenea Iancu (Uncle Iancu). Throughout the time, the universe of Nenea Iancu's work has been brought to life on the stage of the National Theater by Romania's most gifted actors. This double anniversary will bring to the stage of the country's foremost theater three undying masterpieces: O noapte furtunoas (A Stormy Night), directed by Felix Alexa, O scrisoare pierdut (A Lost Letter), directed by Grigore Gona and D'ale carnavalului (Carnival Adventures), as seen through the eyes of Gelu Colceag.
(TAROM Insight)
Find other translations belonging to the same text-type (i.e. nonspecialized cultural articles) and see whether similar conventions are observed for the translation of proper names. Look at how the same translation issue is dealt with in literary texts and the conventions that are observed there. Can you generalize the underlying conventions with regard to the translation of proper names for all text-types?
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On every level of the translation process, it can be shown that, if linguistic considerations enter into conflict with considerations of an ideological and / or poetological nature, the latter tend to win out. (Andr Lefevere)
One of the criticisms that has, sometimes, been levelled at the polysystem theory is that it tends to disregard the ideological factors, which have a considerable impact on the translators' decisions. It is true that they are mentioned by the translation scholars working within the polysystem, and Toury's preliminary norms1 refer to translation policies carried out by different institutions favouring the selection of particular literary works for translation on ideological grounds. Yet, it was rightly felt, even in the early days of Translation Studies, that ideological manipulation through translations could well become a fundamental area of investigation of its own, providing a considerable amount of data for the development of the discipline. As has been shown, the name of Manipulation School was given by the title of an anthology of essays edited by Theo Hermans (1985), The Manipulation of Literature. Studies in Literary Translation, which gathers a number of studies by scholars such as Jos Lambert, van Gorp and Andr Lefevere, sharing the conviction that both translators and readers are manipulated. In the preface, the editor claims that
See Chapter 3. 65
From the point of view of the target literature, all translation implies a degree of manipulation of the source text for a certain purpose. (1985: 9)
However, the translation scholar who has contributed in most significant ways to research along these lines is Andr Lefevere, whose name is closely related to the beginnings of Translation Studies and the Low Countries Group. He subsequently moved to the United States and continued to be extremely active in the field until his untimely death in 1996. In fact, Lefevere defines translation in terms of manipulation, as
one of the processes of literary manipulation whereby texts are rewritten across linguistic boundaries and rewriting takes place in a very clearly inscribed cultural and historical context. (cited in Bassnett 1990: xv)
Lefevere is mainly interested in the practice of translation, in casestudies from various cultures that illustrate how different kinds of ideological constraints have operated on translators, thus explaining processes of manipulation throughout history. Together with Susan Bassnett, he adopts a more cultural less formal approach, focusing on different institutions that construct such ideological discourses, and examines the various extra-textual factors that come into play in translation. Lefevere distances himself from the polysystem theory to which he objects, among other things, its excessive interest in jargon and diagrams. He also finds superfluous its distinction between primary and secondary activities and its abstract categories, which are not related enough to concrete results. However, he still resorts to a systemic approach and devises his own set of terms and categories, which enable him to analyze translations as empirical facts in target cultures in a more deductive manner. Lefevere's overall purpose is to dispel the idea that the translator's main goal when performing a translation is to produce an equivalent text in the target culture, in a neutral, objective way. Instead, he claims, translators are artisans of compromise, being constrained by the times in which they live (i.e. historicalideological factors), the literary traditions they try to reconcile (i.e.
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literary factors), and the features of the languages they work with (i.e. linguistic factors). At the same time, since they are familiar with two cultures and two literatures, translators wield the power (of subversion) of the image-makers, being able to construct the image of one literature for consumption by the readers of another. (cf. 1992a: 6) In what follows, Lefevere's views of translation will be examined alongside with some key terms that he uses in order to account for the reception, acceptance or rejection of literary translations in target cultures.
Refraction
In a 1981 essay, Translated Literature: Towards an Integrated Theory, Lefevere coins the term refraction, which occurs in texts that have been processed for a certain audience (children, for example), or adapted to a certain poetics or a certain ideology. (1981b: 72) From an ideological perspective, translations are thus no longer transparent reflections of their originals, but (inevitably) distorted products for which equivalence no longer seems to work. Moreover, he contends that, whereas refractions are obvious in authoritative political systems (e.g. the Nazi period in Germany, former communist countries), they tend to be less so in democratic societies (e.g. Western countries), where ideology functions under more covert forms. Lefevere argues that these activities are carried out against the background of the prevailing literary climate and political ideology, and that these factors act as a spectrum through which writers and their works are refracted before they reach their audience. (cf. Shuttleworth and Cowie 1997: 142) Such refractions occur not only in the case of translation but also in criticism, teaching, anthologizing and the production of plays. (Lefevere 1982: 4) However, after 1985, Lefevere replaces refraction by the more complex and powerful category of rewriting.
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Rewriting
Rewriting refers to a range of (intra or interlingual, o. n.) processes, including translation, which can be said to re-interpret, alter or manipulate an original text in some way. (cf. Shuttleworth and Cowie 1997: 147) Thus, besides translations, anthologies, literary histories, reference works, biographies and book reviews are also rewritings, together with more sophisticated forms such as films, which may be visual rewritings of novels or comic strips, etc. Lefevere (1992a, b, 1998, passim) has repeatedly insisted that nowadays people tend to be more exposed to rewritings than to originals. Hence, their crucial importance in shaping images of literary works, authors and cultures. In Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame (1992a) Lefevere refers to image as the projection of any work or author into a given culture, which frequently exerts more influence than the original has had in its own culture. (1992a: 110) Such images are also the concrete result of the different constraints under which rewriters work. Of all rewritings translation is a privileged object of study because
it shows the workings of all these constraints more clearly than most other forms of rewriting. But it needs to be studied in conjunction with them, for they all partake in the packaging, remodelling, manipulation, construction and transmission of cultural goods. (1991: 143)
As translations and other rewritings function as originals in the target culture, rewriters and translators are not only victims of ideological and literary pressures. They also wield the great power of constructing other cultures for the culture within which they work. For Lefevere, one of the fascinating aspects related to rewritings is that they show
how one image dislodges another, the ways in which different images of the same writers and their works coexist with each other and contradict each other. (1998: 10)
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In fact, in many of his papers Lefevere juxtaposes such (rewritten, manipulated) images of the same original, examining the (sometimes) striking differences between them in the light of the translators' ideologies and historical changes. Various translations of Catullus's poems, Bertold Brecht's plays, Ann Frank's diary, various rewritings by critics of Mme de Stal, and by anthologists of Africa, are but a few examples from a vast array.
Cultural authority
In Translating Literature Practice and Theory in a Comparative Literature Context (1992b) Lefevere uses the concept of authority, and relates it both to factors working inside the system of the target culture (patronage, poetics, etc., see below) and to the source culture itself. Indeed, the power and prestige enjoyed by a source culture could well account for the selection of texts to be translated from it as well as for particular translation strategies translators may decide to adopt. At certain times, certain cultures proved to be more prestigious, more authoritative than other neighbouring cultures or successor cultures. Lefevere's examples are those of the French culture that was central for Germany during the first half of the 18th century, of the culture of classical antiquity that was central to Europe from the Renaissance to our century or that of T'ang China acting as a cultural model to Japan during certain historical periods. Such cases are, in fact, extremely frequent in the history of cultures and literatures. The translation policies of the Romanian culture until the first half of the 20th century are, for instance, well related to the prestige that the French cultural model enjoyed in this country, a prestige that it shares today with other cultures (e.g. the American one). Lefevere's presentation of some Aeneids in English (1998) is another instance which clearly shows that the success of translations over time has less to do with the intrinsic quality of the translated texts as such and more with the prestige of the authoritative (Latin) culture, a safe source of cultural capital. (see below)
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Of course, cultural authority which involves translations may bring about changes in the ways people write in the target culture. Lefevere (1998: 9) illustrates this by referring to translated American advertisements all over the world, which have had an impact on the language of advertising. However, cultural authority does not eliminate the possibility of resisting it, as is the case, for instance, with advertising jeans in Islamic countries. Discussing matters of cultural authority inevitably leads to problems of cultural asymmetries as they are now called in Cultural Studies and to the (historical) issue of colonization. Thus, translating the literature of the colonized into cultures of authority, Lefevere shows, has generated ethnocentric attitudes resulting in translations that are tailored to the target culture exclusively and that screen out whatever does not fit in with [them]. (1992b: 120) This issue is so important that nowadays it forms a distinct area of research (i.e. the postcolonial discourse) in Cultural Studies and contemporary Translation Studies, and will be treated in more detail in a separate section of this book.
One which operates from outside the system by means of patronage and ideology; One which operates from inside the system and involves poetics and professionals. Working outside the literary system, patronage is defined as something like the powers (persons, institutions) that can further or hinder the reading, writing and rewriting of literature (1992a: 15). Power is seen in its Foucauldian sense, not just as a repressive force, but also as something that produces things () induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse. (ibid.) Patronage may be exerted by: o a prominent historical / cultural figure: e.g. Elizabeth I, Cosimo Medici, Louis XIV, Hitler, Stalin, etc. o groups of persons: a religious body, a political party, a social class, the royal court, publishers and the media (newspapers, magazines, TV corporations, etc.); o institutions (academics, censorship bureaus, critical journals, the educational establishment, publishing houses, etc.), which regulate both the (re)writing of literature and its distribution. Patronage is also defined by three components, which characterize its functioning: 1) an ideological component seen in a broad sense of social conventions rather than in a narrow, political one. It is a fundamental element of the system, and is understood as the dominant concept of what society should be, or can be allowed to be. (ibid.: 14) Ideological control is exerted both from the outside (e.g. institutions deciding which literary works will be translated) and from inside the system as well. The ideological component refers both to the translator's ideology and to the ideology imposed upon the translator by patronage. In fact, Lefevere's main interest seems to lie in the examination of the ways in
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which manipulations occur as a result of ideological differences. 2) an economic aspect, since the patron sees to it that writers and rewriters are able to make a living, and 3) an element of status as acceptance of patronage implies integration into a certain support group and its life style. (ibid.: 16) Some of Lefeveres examples in this respect are Adolf Bartels proudly proclaiming he had been decorated by Hitler, and the Beat poets gathering around the City Lights bookstore in San Francisco. Finally, patronage may be differentiated or undifferentiated. It is differentiated when the three components are relatively independent from each other, i.e economic success is relatively independent of ideological factors and does not necessarily bring status with it, as is the case, for instance, with the authors of best-sellers. When it comes to undifferentiated patronage, the same patron controls all the components, as used to happen with most literary systems in the past. If writers, translators and the other rewriters (critics, anthologists) accept patronage it means that they will work within the parametres set by their patron, i.e. they should be willing and able to legitimize both the status and the power of those patrons. (1992b: 18) Lefeveres example for this is the odes that used to be written to comrade Stalin. Institutions reinforce the dominant literary trends of a period against which all the other literary productions are measured. The tendency of the patronage system is, therefore, conservative. Universities and other educational establishments try to keep the literary canon alive by means of the selection of authors and texts for literary courses. If changes occur in the literary conventions and ideology of a period, rewritings will readjust the canon, bringing it in line with the new dominant trends in both fields. For instance, if rewriting is done through literary criticism, we can always think of the Marxist grids applied to all the 18th and 19th century English novels by Eastern European countries in the communist period. If rewriting is done through translation, once again
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we can consider the careful choice of the books to be translated in all authoritative systems, as well as the significant omission by translators of passages in a literary work that might run against the dominant ideology. The control mechanism which operates inside the system includes professionals such as critics, reviewers, teachers, translators, who occasionally repress the literary works that are too blatantly opposed to the dominant concept of what literature should (be allowed to) be its poetics and of what society should (be allowed to) be its ideology. (1992a: 14) However, in most cases, censorship is replaced by the rewriting of the literary works until they meet the standards of literary and ideological acceptability for a particular time in history. Poetics also works inside the system. According to Lefevere, its boundaries transcend languages, and ethnic and political entities. (ibid.: 30) Moreover, a dominant poetics tends to be dominated by ideology. One of Lefevere's examples is the early spread of Islam from Arabia, which led to the adoption of Arabic poetics by other languages such as Turkish, Persian and Urdu. In Lefevere's model, poetics consists of two components: o an inventory of literary devices, genres, motifs, prototypical characters, situations and symbols and, from a functional perspective, o a concept of the role of literature in the social system as a whole. Both components are held in view when Lefevere states that in systems with differentiated patronage, different critical schools will try to elaborate different canons of their own (...) as the only 'real' one. (ibid.: 29) In setting up these various literary canons, ideological matters are involved as well. Here one of Lefeveres examples is that of F. R. Leavis, the rewriter of the canon of English literature (which incorporates Chaucer, Shakespeare, Jonson, the Jacobeans and Metaphysicals, Bunyan, Pope, Samuel Johnson, Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, Austin, G. Eliot, Hopkins, H. James, Conrad, D. H. Lawrence).
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While teaching at Cambridge, Leavis could propagate his canon in a most successful way. On the other hand, T. S. Eliot, who was providing his own poetics and his own canon without having a similar institutional basis, failed in his enterprise. More specifically, the power of translations as rewritings is exercised not just by projecting the image of one writer or work in another literature [...] but also by introducing new devices into the inventory component of a poetics and paving the way to changes in its functional component. (ibid.: 38) Lefeveres example is that of the ode as a fixture of the French literary system at the time of the Pleiade, via translations from Latin. In fact, of all the factors present in the target culture, two seem to be, in Lefevere's opinion, particularly relevant for shaping the image of a literary work as projected by a translator. One is the translator's ideology whether willingly embraced or imposed as a constraint by some form of patronage. The other one is the poetics that is dominant in the receiving literature. Together these factors determine the translator's strategies. One of them is faithfulness, which in Lefevere's view is just one translational strategy that can be inspired by the collocation of a certain ideology with a certain poetics. Moreover, he finds that far from being objective or valuefree faithful translations are often inspired by a conservative ideology. (ibid.: 51) Translated texts may fulfil contradictory functions in a culture. On the one hand, they project an image of the translated work and through it of the world it belongs to, on the other they protect the target culture against too radically different images. (ibid.: 126) As will be seen, both functions and the latter in particular are discussed at length by Venuti (1990, 1992, 1995, passim), being the cornerstones of his approach to translation. On the other hand, as Lefevere points out, the translated text itself may exert authority in the target culture (an authority that is usurped of its source text), an obvious example being pseudotranslations. Original works were published as translations so as to give their authors a chance to experiment with an alternative poetics
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of a pretended source and see whether the translated work could get prominence within the target culture by virtue of its foreign provenance. One of Lefeveres examples is Walpoles The Castle of Otranto, experimenting with the Gothic novel in English literature, initially presented as a translation from Italian. Lefevere uses the term of acculturation, taken from EvenZohar, so as to refer to the result of the clash between the two cultures involved in translation. He states that in practice the problem tends to solve itself as cultural environments grow closer together, whereas the process is less successful where isolationist or politically less influential cultures are involved. (1992b: 127) Once source culture facts have been explained, they become (or, at least, they should) parts of the conceptual environment of the target culture. Lefeveres example is the Russian word borscht, first explained to Western European languages, now a reality in Western restaurants. Translations are also capable of bestowing authority on language, either by expanding the resources of an already widely circulated language (source texts belonging to a minor literature are translated into an important one) or by proving the equally suggestive resources of less circulated languages (translations of texts belonging to cultures of authority into these languages). Naturally, the case of successful translations into Romanian of literary texts that have become part and parcel of the worlds cultural stock may be easily incorporated into the latter alternative1. Lefevere emphasizes the fact that translators may or may not submit to the ideological and poetological constraints functioning in a system. Thus there is always a possibility for translators and other (re)writers to subvert mainstream ideology and poetics. Because translation means importation of goods from beyond the system's boundaries, it is always potentially subversive, which is why it tends to be heavily regulated. (1985: 237)
Ioan Kohns book Virtuile compensatorii ale limbii romne n traducere (Compensatory Virtues of the Romanian Language in Translation, 1983) is an illustration of this direction. 75
1
Language
Language becomes increasingly unimportant among Lefevere's constraints. In Translating Literature Practice and Theory in a Comparative Literature Context (1992b) it is still mentioned, in a chapter apart, in terms of its links with culture, as well as a possible level of translation analysis. However, in subsequent works Lefevere states that language only has a tangential impact on translation and the factors that shape how a culture defines translation for itself seem to be language-independent but still culturally bound to a great extent. (1998: 24) Although this statement is somewhat vague, and its own context does not provide any other reading clues, it is clear that the cultural turn in Translation Studies is quite visible in Lefevere's own writings.
See Chapter 2. 76
access to world literature texts written in less circulated languages (such as the Kalevala) have to operate by analogy and be translated so as to correspond to something like the Western grid (exposed to a Greek and Latin tradition of epics and also, to a certain extent, to Nordic sagas). In more specific terms, in an essay on Composing the Other Lefevere refers to the textual and conceptual grids both writers of original texts and translators are faced with. Textual grids contain certain markers designed to elicit certain reactions on the reader's part. (1999: 76) The conceptual ones concern those subject matters that may be problematic or unproblematic in a given culture. In this rephrased definition, the former grids appear to be no more than texttypes or genres, which are culturally determined forms, and may coexist in several cultures, all the more so as Lefevere's illustrative examples are about being able to recognize texts such as fairy tales or unsuccessful translations of the Arabic qasidas into Western languages. The latter kind of grids relates to culture-specific meanings and issues that may or may not be acceptable to other cultures. These grids are intertwined and their interplay, Lefevere claims (cf. 1999: 77-78), may have two significant consequences for translation: o they may highlight the translators' creativity since, like the writers of the originals, they will have to find ways of manipulating the grids so that intercultural communication becomes not only possible but also interesting and attractive; o they may enable researchers and translators to account for the construction and, respectively, construct cultures with an awareness of these distinct grids. Thus, the category of analogy mentioned above as a necessity for literary works to become part of world literature may also be pernicious when it comes to translating from other distinct cultures:
When we no longer translate Chinese T'ang poetry as if it were Imagist blank verse, which it manifestly is not, we shall be able to 77
understand T'ang poetry on its own terms. This means, however, that we shall have to tell the readers of our translations what T'ang poetry is really like, by means of introductions, the detailed analysis of selected texts, and such. (ibid.: 78)
In other words, different textual and conceptual, i.e. cultural grids need to be known by the readers of the target cultures if they are supposed to understand the Other. Lefevere's grids may well overlap with other categories that he had formerly introduced in order to better describe the crucial translational issue of cultural difference. One such category is the universe of discourse, customs and concepts that were immediately intelligible to the readers of the original but are no longer intelligible to prospective readers of the translation. (1992b: 88) The other one is cultural script, the accepted pattern of behaviour expected of people who fill certain roles in a certain culture. (1992a: 89)
Cultural capital
Cultural capital is an updated broader term that replaces what polysystem theorists referred to as the literary canon. The concept was borrowed by Lefevere from Pierre Bourdieu, who introduced and used it in a sociological context. Cultural capital refers to the information a person needs in any given society to belong to the right circles. (1998: 41) Translation, among other factors, is directly responsible with the transmission, distribution and regulation of cultural capital not only between cultures, but also within one given culture. Thus, throughout history, the activity of famous translation schools, such as the School of Toledo, could well be regarded, Lefevere argues, as an attempt to transmit cultural capital on a grand scale. In a more explicit manner,
Cultural capital () is the kind of capital intellectuals can still claim to have, and even, if only to some extent, to control, as opposed to economic capital, which most intellectuals do not even claim to have any more. Cultural capital is what makes you acceptable in your society at the end of the socialization process known as education. (ibid.: 42) 78
In Lefevere's opinion (ibid.: 44), there are three factors on which the distribution and regulation of cultural capital depends. In the case of translations they function, in fact, as other kinds of constraints on the translators' strategies: o the needs of the audience; o the patron or initiator of the translation; o the relative prestige of the source and target cultures and their languages. The examination of different case studies (e.g. Lefevere's investigation of the translations into English of Virgil's Aeneid, 1998) sheds light on how these factors interrelate and account for the spreading of what counts as great literary values for different cultures. In this process, translations together with other rewritings (criticism, anthologies, etc.) play a crucial part.
empirical research focusing on ways in which various forms of constraints ideological and literary ones in particular operate in different target cultures. At the same time, in almost all his writings there is a concern for accessibility which regards not only his professional readers, but also the students of Comparative Literature such as the ones he was teaching in Austin, Texas or, more generally, students involved in translation programmes. Many of his books and essays are also portions of histories of translation written for different cultures, in which an amazing variety of images of authors and translated texts emerges. Lefevere's methodology and many of his views of translation have been shared by Susan Bassnett, with whom Lefevere collaborated for more than fifteen years and co-authored a series of books and programmatic introductions and manifestos. Together they had an important role in putting Translation Studies on the academic map. However, Bassnett's translational discourse is more obviously informed by deconstruction and Cultural Studies and most of her works focus on the translation of literary genres drama in particular. Although Lefevere mentions that the factors that operate constraints are in no way absolute and only condition the translators' choices, the general impression that most of his studies leave is, however, that translations refract, manipulate, originals, and only reflect dominant ideologies and poetics. Translators seem, therefore, to fulfill a rather passive role, in which they rarely display their creativity. Another aspect that tends to be overlooked in his studies is a more accurate description of all the institutions through which patronage actually functions in a society. Nevertheless, Lefevere's research has shifted the focus of interest from translations as accumulations of texts in target cultures to translations as cultural and ideological phenomena, which not only manipulate their readers but also construct cultures through all the institutions and agents involved. Both the Polysystem Theory and the Manipulation School belong to Descriptive Translation Studies. Its major tenets and achievements are mentioned by Hermans as follows:
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The most central and powerful tenet of descriptive translation studies has been that translation cannot be defined a priori, once and for all. What translation means has to be established, however provisionally, by means of tentative theories, paradoxical methodologies and patient study. The other major contribution of descriptivism, the contextualization of translation, follows from this. It involved a reorientation which brought first culture and then politics and power into the picture. It reminded the discipline of its social relevance. (1999: 158-159)
As for the more recent tendencies in Translation Studies, which are related to the Manipulation School, one of them is definitely towards replacing the descriptive (i.e. more or less objective) stance by more committed approaches that better highlight the scholars' ideologies. Post-structuralism, gender studies, postcolonial studies are such areas of investigation that mark a more radical turn of Translation Studies in the Cultural Studies direction.
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c) Discuss the image of the author, literary work, character(s) in the literary work that both the preface and the translation as rewritings of the original provide for the Romanian readers. 4. What texts does your culture consider central to its identity? Do they include any religious, ideological texts, or literary texts as well? If texts embody the identity of a culture, what measures does that culture need to take to ensure that those texts survive and flourish? Are translations encouraged or discouraged? (adapted from Lefevere 1992b: 143) 5. According to Lefevere, the dominant poetics of a target culture plays an important part in shaping the image of a literary work at a particular historical time. If we consider, for instance, Romanian literature between the two World Wars, two (different) poetics a conservative and a modernist one were simultaneously supported by (at least) two equally prestigious literary groups, which spread their views of literature by means of two famous specialized reviews, Viaa Romneasc and Sburtorul. The leading figures who organised the literary circles and edited the reviews were Garabet Ibrileanu and Eugen Lovinescu. They also promoted the dominant literary canons by means of literary criticism, courses delivered at the universities of Iai and Bucharest, as well as a deliberate policy of translations which their respective publications undertook. What were these literary circles' ideas about what literature should be like? What were the differences in their opinions? Did these literary circles encourage translations? For which purposes? What kind of literary texts did they mainly have in view? 6. Consider two literary translations in your culture that could be regarded as cultural capital. Read Lefevere's considerations in this respect and his example of Aeneid as cultural capital below.
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Cultural capital, then, is the kind of capital intellectuals can still claim to have, and even, if only to some extent, to control, as opposed to economic capital, which most intellectuals do not even claim to have any more. Cultural capital is what makes you acceptable in your society at the end of the socialization process known as education
[To] the authors of the first English translations of the Aeneid, from Gavin Douglas to John Dryden and beyond, Virgil was cultural capital, and of the highest order, though not just because he was Virgil. In John Guillory's formulation (1993), cultural capital is, first and foremost, linguistic capital, the means by which one attains to a socially credentialed and therefore valued speech. In Dryden's time, Latin could still claim to be that speech. From Dryden to Singleton, therefore, translating Virgil also means giving your readers access to Latin, in one form or anotherThese various forms have one feature in common, though: they represent types of translations that do not try to replace their original, but to supplement it, whereas modern translations mainly try to replace it. Not knowing Latin in Virgil's time might mean that one would be excluded from polite society, more specifically, and more importantly for the rising bourgeoisie, from the commerce, in all senses of the word, of that polite society. Not knowing Latin, on the other hand, would be sure to mean exclusion, barring access not necessarily to commerce in the obvious sense of the word, but to the social mobility craved by those engaged in that kind of commerce, to the cultural and material rewards of well-educated person. (1998: 42, 43)
a) Do the works you have chosen give you access to the language of the original? In what language was the original written? b) What are the advantages that acquaintance with these works provides? c) Do the translations of these works try to replace the original or do they merely supplement it?
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issues. His approach is hermeneutic1 and he defines it as the investigation of what it means to 'understand' a piece of oral or written speech, and the attempts to diagnose this process in terms of a general model of meaning. (1975: 237) In fact, in his attempted history of translations Steiner detects two such periods of hermeneutic inquiry in the evolution of the discipline: one covers the work of the 19th century German Romantic philosophers, linguists, writers, theologians Schleiermacher, Schlegel, Humboldt, Schopenhauer, Goethe, as well as other important texts on translation by Matthew Arnold, Paul Valry, Ezra Pound, I. A. Richards, Benedetto Croce, Ortega Y Gasset, Valry Larbaud, etc., and lasts until the first half of the 20th century. A second renewal of interest starts in the 1960's, together with the discovery of Walter Benjamin's seminal essay The Task of the Translator (written in 1923) and the emergence of the more recent generation of hermeneutists, comprising the outstanding philosophers Heidegger and Gaddamer. In offering his model of meaning, Steiner draws on both periods of hermeneutic investigation. Steiner's exhaustive historical examination of what is now called traditional translation theory leads him to the conclusion that despite [the] rich history, and despite the calibre of those who have written about the art and theory of translation, the number of original, significant ideas in the subject remains very meagre. (ibid.: 238) In fact, as other subsequent theorists have also noticed, traditional theory seems to incessantly turn round the dichotomy of literal vs. free
Hermeneutics refers to the theory of interpretation. The term was originally used by 19th century German theologians to designate a new kind of interpretation of the Bible, and it included interpretation both as 1) the formulation of rules regarding how meaning is established in reading and as 2) exegesis, or commentary on meanings expressed in the text. As used in literary studies, hermeneutics denotes a theoretical and critical practice that denies the notion of a single truth expressed by a given work of art, and asks instead for critical approaches that allow for multiple interpretations. (cf. Guerin et all., 1992: 295) 86
translation or, more concisely, round the issue of the fidelity of translation. In his book, Steiner makes use of Wittgenstein's1 distinction between the existence of a problem and of unsystematic ways of solving it, explaining how a 'solution' can coexist with the absence of any systematic method of solution (ibid: 275), which is the case of translation and of the theory he wants to put forward. The author starts from Roman Jakobson's well-known classification of translation (1959), that comprises: o intralingual translation, occurring inside the same language, whenever something is explained by means of paraphrase or the replacement of a word by a synonym, etc.; o interlingual translation, taking place between different languages, and corresponding to what is generally understood to be translation proper; o intersemiotic translation or transmutation (the broadest type), possible because of the existence of other codes, i.e. the musical code, the colour code, etc., whose message can also be translated, i.e. explained. This perspective on translation incorporates the other two types, translation being thus integrated within a wider and more coherent theory of communication.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), Austrian-British philosopher, famous for his contribution to the movement known as analytic and linguistic philosophy and to logical positivism. In his posthumously published Philosophical investigations (1953) he introduced the influential concept of language games. Thus, according to him, the meaning of a proposition must be understood in its context, i.e. in terms of the rules of the language game of which that proposition is a part. In his view, philosophy is an attempt to resolve problems that arise as a result of linguistic confusion and the key to the resolution of such problems is language analysis and the proper use of language. 87
It is this last perspective that Steiner adopts for his comprehensive theory1. A totalizing approach, the author claims, meaning by this an intentionally sharpened, hermeneutically oriented way of designating a working model of all meaningful exchanges, of the totality of semantic communication, is more instructive because it argues the fact that all procedures of expressive articulation and interpretative reception are translational, whether intra- or interlingually. (ibid.: 279) Moreover, such a theory could be systematic only if related to a theory of language. The links with language could be of two kinds: a) there could be a total overlap, so that a theory of translation is in fact a theory of language; b) there could be links of strict formal dependence, so that the theory of language is the whole, of which translation is a part. However, linguistics is still in a hypothetical stage, we have some measurements, some scintillating tricks of the trade and far-ranging guesses. But no Euclidean elements. (ibid.: 280) As will be seen, one of these far-ranging guesses transformational generative grammar is discussed at length and even used as a landmark in Steiner's demonstrations. Many other established and newly evolving disciplines are shown to be relevant to translation and they constantly inform Steiner's discourse. Besides philosophy and linguistics, poetics, literary criticism, history, anthropology, biology, psychology, neurophysiology, sociolinguistics, sociology, logic, mathematics, music, cryptography and the enumeration could still continue shed new light on the act of translation. The most frequently examined products are literary texts of all kinds as well as religious and philosophical works. Then there is, of course, hermeneutics governing Steiner's whole enterprise. Every understanding is interpretative. Even the most literal statement [] has a hermeneutic dimension. It needs
Steiner uses theory between inverted commas as, in his opinion, no coherent theory, able to explain and predict all translational phenomena has so far been achieved. 88
1
decoding. It means more or less something other than it says. (ibid.: 280) The author devotes the first chapter of his book to Understanding as Translation, showing how the two are related. The French word interprte, he argues (ibid.: 27), and, we should add, the Romanian interpret, too, are general enough to apply not only to the translator's enterprise but also, from a semiotic perspective, to the critic or to the pianist who engages his/her own identity in decoding a literary text or a musical piece. Like Wittgenstein, Steiner is well-aware that any total reading is potentially unending. Nevertheless, his totalizing approach includes exhaustive analyses of the factors that may have a bearing on interpretation. The first one is time, and history that goes with it. Languages change and no semantic form is timeless, therefore the interpreter must strive to restore, to the extent to which it is possible to do so, the intent and value of the original speech acts. In other words, and in keeping with the tenets of the hermeneutic perspective (e.g. Heidegger, Gadamer), the historical context plays a crucial part when accounting for the meaning of a text. Actually, history is involved in various ways in After Babel: there are carefully contextualized interpretations of literary texts, there are specific discussions on how to deal with old texts and the archaisms they comprise, there are histories of philosophy, of linguistics, of language, of literature and of translation theory, there are histories of the reception of literary texts. Thus, for instance, in order to decipher Posthumous's monologue in Coriolanus, one needs to be well-acquainted not only with the whole text of Shakespeare's play, but also with Shakespearian and Elizabethan dramatic conventions, with the more general context of early 17th century speech habits, with the author's biography, etc., so each interpretative reading requires a careful preparation for it. (ibid.: 5) Among other things, the presence of archaisms in translated old texts may achieve the (reassuring) stylistic effect of dj-vu, which facilitates integration into national repertoires. (ibid.: 346),
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Dilthey1 is mentioned as being the first to have emphasized that understanding itself is involved in history, hence its relativity and the continuous necessity for retranslating texts after a certain lapse of time. Thus, interpretation, except in the first momentary instance, is always reinterpretation both of the original and of the intervening body of commentary. (ibid.: 249) Language also varies with place, and is associated with a centrifugal impulse. Steiner discusses the (occasional) intra-cultural difficulty of making sense of regional dialects as compared to the standard language used by the media. Needless to say that translating regional dialects (an aspect to which the author does not refer, probably in view of its obviousness), particularly in literary texts, is one of the translators' touchstones. Interpretation may also concern the authors' / speakers' social affiliations, the sociolect that they use, testifying to their belonging to a particular social category or class. Moreover, Steiner is among the first to examine how sociolects cut across age (children's language) and sex (men vs. women's discourse). These aspects add further layers of significance on language and, as subsequent translational discourses have increasingly shown, have important consequences on translation too. On the one hand, language has a public dimension and has meaning only in so far as it can be verified in a social context. It ensures communication and also involves (some kind of) translation. On the other hand, it is also intensely personal. The variables previously discussed already lead the author to the conclusion that
No two historical epochs, no two social classes, no two localities use words and syntax to signify exactly the same thing, to send identical signs of valuation and inference. Neither do two human beings. (ibid.: 45) Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911). German philosopher who sought to make hermeneutics the tool of investigation of human sciences in the same way in which the scientific method was appropriate for the natural sciences. History became his favoured discipline for the practice of hermeneutics, because it posed the philosophical problem of the transposition of individual historical experience into intelligible general understanding. 90
1
The notion of idiolect reinforces the personal aspect of language, the fact that each individual has a private thesaurus, generated by his/her somatic and psychological identity, subconscious, memories, etc. Idiolects are linked by Steiner to elements of privacy in language, to the fact that people do not speak only to communicate, but also to conceal and misinform. They also relate to a person's creative use of language, to one's (literary) style, thus accounting for the existence of fictional works and their creative translation. Interpretations of language-acts and written works also vary between individuals and hermeneutics deals with personal interpretations. The author's meticulousness goes so far as to find neurophysiological reasons for the surplus of meaning generated by language (meaning is the surplus-value of the labour performed by language). This asymmetry is parallelled to the asymmetries existing in the human brain between the temporal lobes, between the areas of the brain that control language and movement, etc. (ibid.: 280) Finally, even chance may have a bearing on interpretation. In the history of (interlingual) translation a fortunate misreading has sometimes given new life to the original text. (ibid.: 295)
[The title] refers, in an extremely ambiguous and complex manner, both to the incredible diversification of languages after the Babel disaster and to the reverse process, namely the efforts of mankind to surpass the barriers between languages through translations, as a result of nostalgia, of a longing for Babel. (1983: 9, my translation)
As far as the Babel myth as such is concerned, throughout his book Steiner provides several interpretations of it. One of them relates to Walter Benjamin's The Task of the Translator (see ANNEX 2), that Steiner is among the first to recuperate, and which is in itself an interpretation of the story. In Benjamin's view, to translate ultimately means to have access to the pure language, also called Logos (that which makes speech meaningful), a universal language, a hidden spring, of which all the languages shattered after Babel are but silted channels. In order to achieve a genuine translation, and get as closely as possible to the pure language the translator has to retain a vital strangeness and otherness in regard to his own language. This involves, in practice, a strong source text language orientation of the translation. In a messianic tone, Benjamin foresees the end of history when languages will have returned to their initial source, reestablishing their pre-Babel condition. Throughout his reading of Benjamin, Steiner shows how the latter's essay derives from the mystic tradition Kabbala, but also from the German Romantic school. In Benjamin's view:
all great writings, but the Scriptures in the highest degree, contain between the lines their virtual translation. The interlinear version of the Scriptures is the archetype or ideal of all translations. (cited in Steiner 1975: 65)
speech. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth. (Genesis 11, 1-9, King James Version) 92
Benjamin's essay drawing on the Babel myth also serves as a mystical support to Steiner's strong claims for translatability. Adopting Benjamin's stance, the author argues that
Even if the exact motivation of the disaster at Babel remains obscure, it would be sacrilege to give to this act of God an irreparable finality, to mistake the deep pulse of ebb and flow which marks the relations of God to men even in, perhaps most especially in, the moment of punishment. As the Fall may be understood to contain the coming of the Redeemer, so the scattering of tongues at Babel has in it, in a condition of urgent moral and practical potentiality, the return to linguistic unity. (ibid.: 244)
In the meantime, only translation has access to the language of Babel. In a different context, that of language diversity which defies the linguists' attempts to find a unifying core, Steiner has yet another interpretation of the Biblical story:
It is conceivable that we have misread the Babel myth. The tower did not mark the end of a blessed monism, of a universal-language situation. The bewildering prodigality of tongues had long existed, and had materially complicated the enterprise of men. In trying to build the tower, the nations stumbled on the great secret: that true understanding is possible only when there is silence. They built silently, and there lay the danger to God. (ibid.: 286)
Understanding and communication through the language of silence is another topic of great fascination that is treated in more detail in a volume apart1. Most of the time, however, the Babel tower is only a suggestive metaphor for erudite investigations of the search for the primary language in the Kabbalistic tradition, in European mysticism, Darwinism, or in the universalist as opposed to relativist trends in philosophy. Steiner's universalist bias, his (lucid) aspiration for an ultimate unity (Babel) underneath the amazing diversity of languages and cultures (that he strongly emphasizes), for a coherent
Language and Silence: Essays on Language, Literature and the Inhuman (1967). 93
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theory of meaning, language and translation are, nevertheless, constantly present in the book. Thus, the author tries to find, for instance, universals of human psychology (ibid.: 38), and discusses at length (possible) universals of language and of culture in a permanent attempt to link in a meaningful way a universal base with the variety of languages, as they exist and differ among themselves. Linguistic theories, like philosophical ones, may be relativist or universalist. The former are related to such names as Humboldt, Sapir and Whorf, all claiming, in different ways, that each language provides a ready-made interpretation of reality. Steiner's objection to views on language built along this hypothesis is that if every language mapped reality in a distinct manner interlingual communication would be impossible, while, in fact, it continuously occurs. (ibid.: 94) The alternative position the universalist one posits the existence of universals located at different levels. Of all these theories, Chomsky's generative grammar, as a theory of mental life is regarded as one that has turned to best account the innate human capacities. The existence of an internalized grammar that enables every child to construct and understand new utterances is explained through underlying (universal) deep structures that generate, through a series a rules of transformation, the surface languages that are actually spoken. Differences between languages are thus differences of surface structure. But Chomsky's strongly formalist approach focuses on syntax and rather overlooks semantic universals although he attempts to put forward some. Structuralists like Lvy-Strauss prefer to deal with them as universal binominals or contrast pairs: one of them, the black/white dichotomy seems to convey, for instance, a positive/negative valuation in all cultures. (ibid.: 103) For Steiner the postulate of [semantic] universals should lead, by direct inference, to a working theory of interlingual translation. (ibid.: 105) Or, Chomsky (strangely) rejects any applicability of his theory to translation. Among other things, Steiner regards Chomsky's transformational generative grammar (and other formalist approaches, for that matter) as (too) reductionist. Moreover, such orientations totally disregard the social, cultural and historical
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aspects of language. What Steiner suggests is an approach whose bias of interest is languages rather than Language; whose evidence will derive from semantics () rather than from pure syntax and is far less amenable to formal codification. (ibid.: 107-108) In fact, the total, the ideal theory of linguistic translation should be able to reconcile the universalist (seen in a less schematic and less rigid manner than in the formalist approaches) and relativist positions. Steiner's ultimate need for a return to Babel before its destruction, for positing an invariant in discussing (intersemiotic) translations, is clearly manifest in the last chapter of After Babel, Topologies of Culture. Here, topology is defined as the branch of mathematics which deals with those relations between points and those fundamental properties of a figure which remain invariant when that figure is bent out of shape. (ibid.: 425, my emphasis) In a similar way, in a culture there are (specifically verbal, thematic and formal) invariants and constants, which underlie a multitude of shapes of expression. Thus, defined 'topologically', a culture is a sequence of translations and transformations of constants. (ibid.: 426) In this way, concepts put forward by transformational generative grammar acquire a larger meaning: Translation, in the wider sense which we are now considering () transforms the 'deep structures' of inheritance verbal, thematic, iconographic into the 'surface structures' of social reference and currency. (ibid.: 429) For Steiner, the deep structure of inheritance, the invariant for Western cultures is Greco-Latin and Hebraic. What came after is regarded as re-creative (intersemiotic) translation, variation, adjustment. The Western culture is one of dynamic traditionality, in view of the limited number of fundamental intellectual insights and psychological attitudes. (ibid.: 429-463) These ideas are highly debatable and have given rise to a great deal of criticism both on methodological (the universalist position) and ideological (elitist views) grounds. They are, nevertheless, in keeping with the title of the book, highlighting the role of translation in the broad definition of the term in accounting for the variety of linguistic and cultural forms of expression and allowing access to some kind of (obscurely defined) source.
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However, throughout the book the Babel myth mainly functions as a complex metaphor. According to Douglas Robinson,
While Steiner draws heavily on both Goethe and Benjamin (), he also significantly secularizes his predecessors' mysticism, reads it as ethical rather than eschatological as directed towards good translation rather than the redemption of the world. (1998: 99)
Source cultures themselves are enriched through the translation of their texts and they become thus more prestigious. Steiner uses the metaphor of the mirror which not only reflects, but also generates light, so that the original text gains from the different kinds of relationships and the distance that is established between itself and the translations. (ibid.: 301) On the other hand, translation ensures the survival of the original. This is the after-life of originals through translations mentioned by Benjamin in his essay and, as will be seen,
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so important to Derrida and the deconstructionist scholars. Moreover, translations into world languages give prominence to texts written in local ones or give stature to works that were underestimated in the source culture. As a hermeneutic, interpretative act translation is inflationary and involves in it a dynamic of magnification. Hence Schleiermacher's notion of a hermeneutic which knows better than the author did1. When translations fall short of the original the latter's virtues become more visible in the target culture, whereas when they surpass it, the implications are that the original possesses potentialities, elemental reserves yet unrealized by itself. (ibid.: 302) Issues of cultural vicinity or distance become more visible in the translational act. Paradoxically, cultural distance seems to work to the translator's advantage. Ignorance of the source language (e.g. Pound's famous translations from Chinese, a language that he did not know), Steiner claims, favours those translators who can, instead, insinuate themselves into the otherness of the source culture. This capacity has sometimes been associated to a kind of insight. (ibid.: 359) But at the same time, and Steiner has been among the first to highlight this, through strategies of suppression, formalization and emblematic emphasis the images of the remote cultures thus created are in keeping with the Western stereotypes and hence expectations about these remote cultures. Thus Steiner speaks of a Western invention of China or of the same rose-water tint of the English versions of the Arabian Nights. (ibid.: 360) The roots of many postcolonial topics going on in contemporary Translation Studies can actually be traced back to After Babel. Moving along the same paradoxical lines, Steiner shows how in translations from close cultures differences and thus translation
Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834). German theologian whose work also marks the setting up of Romantic hermeneutics. In his approach, interpretation is not based on an absolute truth, but on individual feeling and interpretation. His contribution to the development of traditional translation theory is outstanding, his essay On the Different Methods of Translating (1813) being a source of inspiration for many subsequent works in the field. 97
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difficulties become more manifest. As cultural vicinity encourages language imports, in such cases the linguistic side of translation becomes by far stronger. There is always the possibility of analogy, development of comparisons, etc., through which to assess the degree of translatability. But these very analogies make the source text more opaque. Citing Derrida, Steiner sees difference as operating in both directions. On the one hand, for instance, a French translator may see English as different from French, but, at the same time, different in ways that are not similar to the differences between English and Spanish or English and German, etc. On the other hand, knowledge of a second language clarifies and deepens the knowledge of one's own. Thus these differences impose themselves both on the translator and on society. (ibid.: 362) Also Derridean is Steiner's claim that to experience difference, to feel the characteristic resistance and materiality of that which differs is to re-experience identity. This resistance may only be overcome by the translator through elective affinity, i.e. when (s)he is drawn to that text as a kindred spirit in which (s)he recognizes himself/herself. (ibid.) There is, then, the impulse of cultural self-defence on the translator's side, particularly in the case of close distances, wholly energized by interactive differentiation. Steiner's solution to this cultural tension is that of a metaphoric 'calculus' which can simultaneously integrate and differentiate. (ibid.: 363) His (source text oriented) discourse anticipates Venuti's with regard to assertion of cultural identity in a similar manner.
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faith), aggression (penetration or decipherment), incorporation (embodiment or appropriation), compensation (restitution or fidelity). Initiative trust: Every translation act is an investment of belief. It starts from the translators assumption that there is something in the source text that can be understood, that the world is coherent and meaning is present. Even if this is an instantaneous, generally unconscious action, in Steiner's opinion it underlies every act of translation. However, the translator's investment of belief is not deprived of risks. The author mentions the fundamental ones: o that the text to be translated may turn out to be everything, as in the case of Bible translation and hermeneutics which raised huge problems of translation and interpretation; that the text to be translated may be nothing because meaning and form are so tightly connected, that they cannot be separated from each other, as in the case of nonsense rhymes, which are untranslatable because they are lexically non-communicative or deliberately insignificant. (ibid.: 296)
Aggression is the next move through which the translator invades, extracts and brings home the meaning of the source text (ibid.: 298). The association of this stage with violence and aggression is taken from Heidegger. Steiner also retains St. Jerome's comparison between the source text, which has to be brought home, and a captive slave. Other suggestive images related to this act are one of dissection, which leaves the shell smashed and the vital layers stripped, or the simile between the source text and an open-cast mine left an empty scar in the landscape. (ibid.) This hermeneutic aggression may, again, entail two (dangerous) consequences: o that certain texts or genres are exhausted by translation, so they will not survive in the target culture;
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that certain texts may be negated by an act of appropriative penetration and transfer in excess of the original. This means that the translation will acquire a higher aesthetic value than the source text, as a result of a paradox of betrayal by augment. (ibid.) As will be seen, the sexual imagery used by Steiner in the description of this phase has triggered a considerable amount of protests from (women) scholars, approaching translation from a gender studies perspective.