Cultural, Colonialism and Gender Oriented Approaches to Translation 311
rebuke or insult, or an angry look on top of
an overpolite request. In sign languages, indeed, the
face is one of the major phonological articulators.
In the verbal medium, of course, the most obvious
counterpart is the voice, the final analogue signaling
device to be mentioned.
Some speech communities conventionalize affect
and emotion with ways of using the voice, and local
theory may speak informally of, say, an angry voice
or relate a certain named voice quality (whispered or
hoarse) to a particular communicative intent or to
certain sorts of social identities (falsetto voice
among Maya women, or question intonation as a
gender stereotype). The existence of such distinguish-
able speech symptoms also makes possible deliberate
imitation or representation. Voicing a protagonist
by using his or her words and also his or her voice
or bodily attitudes is the stock-in-trade of discursive
virtuosi, among the most characteristic and versatile
of cultural experts.
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Briggs C L (ed.) (1996). Discorderly discourse: narrative,
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Cultural, Colonialism and Gender Oriented Approaches to
Translation
S Bassnett, University of Warwick,
Coventry, UK
2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
The 1990s saw an expansion of research in the field
of translation studies, with some of the most exciting
work following what has come to be termed the
cultural turn. In their preface to a collection of
essays published in 1990, dealing with the role played
by history and by cultural issues in general in transla-
tion practice, Bassnett and Lefevere argued that any
study of translation needs to take into account the
double context of both source and target cultures.
(Bassnett and Lefevere, 1990). An understanding
of the translation norms operating at any given
Clark H H (1996). Using language. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Clark H H (ed.) (2003). Pointing and placing. In Kita S
(ed.) (2003). Pointing: where language, culture, and
cognition meet. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associ-
ates. 243268.
Duranti A & Goodwin C (eds.) (1992). Rethinking context:
language as an interactive phenomenon. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Edwards J A & Lampert M D (1993). Talking data: tran-
scription and coding in discourse research. Hillsdale, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Goffman E (1964). The neglected situation. American
Anthropologist 66(6, pt. 2), 133136.
Goffman E (1981). Forms of talk. Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press.
Goodwin C (1981). Conversational organization: interac-
tion between speakers and hearers. New York: Academic
Press.
Goodwin M H (1990). He-said-she-said: talk as social
organization among black children. Bloomington and
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Hill J H & Irvine J T (1992). Responsibility and evidence
in oral discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Silverstein M & Urban G (eds.) (1996). Natural histories of
discourse. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Urban G (1998). Metaphysical communities. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press.
moment in time needs to be contextualized, since
translation always takes place in a continuum, never
in a vacuum.
In order to explain changes in modes of translation
and the strategies employed by translators, it is neces-
sary to consider when and where a translation takes
place, for whom it is intended, and what the processes
of textual production have been. Such investigation
needs to be set within an overarching frame that
examines the diversity of textual and extratextual
power relationships that operate in different ways,
in different places, and at different times. Such
power relationships are culturally determined.
The cultural turn in translation studies mirrored
similar tendencies in linguistics and in literary studies.
However, it is also the case that cultural questions had
312 Cultural, Colonialism and Gender Oriented Approaches to Translation
long been central to the study of translation. The
linguist J. C. Catford, writing in 1965, endeavored to
distinguish between two types of untranslatability: the
linguistic and the cultural (see Approaches to Transla-
tion, Linguistic). He maintained that linguistic un-
translatability occurs when there is no lexical or
syntactical substitute in the target language for a
source language item. He then distinguished linguistic
from cultural untranslatability, which occurs when
there is nothing in the target language culture that
corresponds to a situational feature in the source
language culture.
Catfords attempt to distinguish between types of
untranslatability, though the subject of much subse-
quent debate, reflects the translation research of its
time, before the advent of translation studies as a
distinctive field in its own right, which happened
in the late 1970s and early 1980s. At the same time
that Catford was formulating his linguistic theory of
translation, Eugene Nida, whose translation the-
ories derive from his expertise as a Bible translator,
endeavored to systematize his translation practice by
establishing what he called a science of translating
(Nida, 1964). Nida also distinguished between cate-
gories of untranslatability, formulating a theory of
equivalence that roughly matches Catfords linguistic
versus cultural dichotomy. Nidas formal equivalence
focuses attention on the form and content of the
message itself, while his dynamic equivalence is
based on the principle of equivalent effect, in short
on creating a relationship between message and re-
ceiver that should be equivalent in terms of what it
does to the original relationship in the source lan-
guage. Later, in the 1980s, a more sophisticated ver-
sion of this approach, known as skopos theory, was
elaborated by Hans Vermeer and Katharina Reiss
(see Functional Approaches to Translation: Skopos
Theory).
Nida was greatly influenced by the anthropological
linguistics of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis posits a relativistic no-
tion of human communication, stating that no two
languages are ever sufficiently similar to be consid-
ered as representing the same social reality. (Sapir,
1956:59). The relativist approach was very important
in the early years of translation studies, when scholars
such as Itamar Even-Zohar, James Holmes, Gideon
Toury, and Andre Lefevere sought to approach the
study of translation in an interdisciplinary manner,
initially following the precepts of polysystems theory.
Polysystems theorists were principally concerned
with literary translation, and their approach derived
from a structuralism that had been inspired by the
thinking of the Russian Formalists and Prague Lin-
guistics Circle of a previous generation. Nevertheless,
the polysystems approach to translation had cultural
questions at its centre. As early as 1978, Even-Zohar
was arguing that any model of a literary system must
include translated literature, since the role played by
translation in bringing innovation and change is of
fundamental importance in most literatures. He en-
deavored to establish a model for the conditions
under which cultures might translate more or fewer
texts, suggesting that patterns of translation vary
according to the needs of the target culture. The pre-
vailing historical conditions determine the type and
number of translations occurring at a given time.
Gideon Toury, Andrew Chesterman, and Theo
Hermans are three scholars who have since developed
the study of variations in norms governing transla-
tion activity, recognizing the significance of cultural
factors.
Polysystems theory introduced a historical and
ideological dimension into the study of translation.
It was recognized that greater awareness of variations
in translating can result from increased knowledge of
the diversity of translation practices and the contexts
in which translation has taken place at different
moments in time. From the 1980s onward, there has
been a huge increase in research into the history of
translation in theory and practice, which has shed
light on cultural variations in contemporary transla-
tions. A good example of the way in which trans-
lation studies has revisited earlier debates can be
seen in the distinction between domestication and
foreignization in translation practice. This dichotomy
was identified and debated extensively by European
translators in the 18th century and has acquired new
resonance in the late 20th and early 21st centuries
through postcolonial literary studies. The American
scholar Lawrence Venuti distinguished between what
he has called fluent and foreignizing translations,
going so far as to advocate a theory and practice
of translation that resists domestication as a means
of foregrounding the important role played by the
translator who has tended, in Western contexts, to
be regarded as an invisible filter (Venuti, 1995).
Venutis advocacy of a foreignizing strategy in
translation has other implications. Eric Cheyfitz
(Cheyfitz, 1991) has argued that translation can be
viewed as the central act of European coloni-
zation and imperialism, a view shared by the Indian
scholar, Tejaswini Niranjana (Niranjana, 1992).
Many translation scholars around the world, notably
 Cultural, Colonialism and Gender Oriented Approaches to Translation 313
in India, Brazil, and Canada, have begun to investigate
the history of translation from a postcolonial perspec-
tive, noting the unequal power relationships that
prevailed for centuries as dominant cultures cherry-
picked texts that would then be domesticated and
made acceptable for home consumption. The most
famous example of this kind of translation practice
is Edward Fitzgeralds The Rubaiyat of Omar
Khayyam, published in 1859.
Andre Lefevere linked the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
to contemporary sociological theory, notably the
work of Pierre Bourdieu, by proposing the utilization
of theories of cultural capital and of cultural grids
in translation analysis. Lefevere notes that Western
and non-Western cultural traditions are so diverse
that translators have to engage in a process of cul-
tural mapping, whereby non-Western cultures are
constructed and located within Western categories.
This strategy raises fundamental questions, not only
about how meaning is manipulated and con-
structed, but also about the ethics of a translation
practice that distorts the source it purports to be
rendering accurately. (Lefevere, in Bassnett and
Trivedi, 1999).
Ethical issues in translation came steadily into pro-
minence through the1990s. As ideological aspects of
translation practice were foregrounded from different
perspectives, so the question of the transformation of
otherness into an acceptable form for consumption by
target language readers has been seen in new light.
The Irish scholar Michael Cronin has written illumi-
natingly about the similarities between translation
and travel writing, both forms that construct other
cultures for a target specific audience. He uses the
terminology of nomadism to explore the role of trans-
lators and interpreters in a world of ever-increasing
mobility, where the relationship between the local
and the global is unstable and transient. Cronin has
also introduced the wider question of language poli-
tics into translation studies, through a discussion of
minority languages and their increasingly precarious
place in the global economy as English develops into
an international lingua franca (Cronin, 2003).
Since the 1980s, translation scholarship has been
particularly engaged with language politics, both
in relation to bilingualism and multilingualism, and
also in relation to gender. The Canadian writers
Barbara Godard, Suzanne de Lotbiniere-Harwood,
and Sherry Simon have all explored questions of
translation and gender, both from a historical per-
spective and in terms of theorizing in-betweenness.
Research into gender and translation has shown that
translation tended for centuries to be seen as a lesser
literary activity and was accordingly feminized
metaphorically, particularly in discussions of the im-
portance of fidelity. Sherry Simon has pointed out
that conventional views of translation for centuries
contrasted an active, vigorous original text with a
more passive, derivative, and subservient translation
(Simon, 1996). More recently, Louise von Flotow,
Rosemary Arrojo, and Vanamala Viswanatha have
developed further lines of inquiry into the politics of
gender and translation.
Underpinning all this thinking is a major shift in
how translation is perceived. Once regarded as instru-
mental and as a textual activity taking place on the
margins of literary and cultural systems, translation
has come to be seen as a textual process of central
importance. Through translation, societies acquire
information and knowledge from beyond their own
linguistic borders, and the impact of translated texts
can be very powerful, both in shaping how other
cultures are perceived and in directly influencing the
target culture. Translation as a means of innovation is
now well-documented. The expansion of research in
translation studies in China in the 21st century, for
example, is linked to the explosion of translation that
has been taking place for some three decades, since
China opened its borders to the rest of the world. As
China reaches out to the West, so translations prolif-
erate. Similarly, in India and in Brazil, where in dif-
ferent ways scholars and writers have engaged with
the legacy of European colonialism, interesting new
thinking about translation has emerged. In India, this
is linked also to extensive translation practice within
national boundaries, across Indian languages, which
has the effect of raising the status of local languages in
a multilingual society. Thinking about translation in
Brazil has been strongly influenced by postmodern-
ism, rather than by postcolonial theory, and perhaps
the most important alternative perspective on the act
of translating has been the Brazilian metaphor of
translation as a form of cannibalism. This metaphor,
which derives from the Brazilian anthropophagist
movement of the 1920s, was related explicitly to
translation by Haraldo de Campos in the 1980s, as
he sought to reread Walter Benjamins writings on
translation from a specifically Brazilian perspective.
Cannibalism, which combines nourishment with
destruction, has become a way of talking about trans-
lation that avoids the discourse of faithfulness and
binarism that has so dominated European think-
ing. The cannibalistic metaphor is one of the strong-
est alternatives to more traditional images of
314 Cultural, Colonialism and Gender Oriented Approaches to Translation
translation as the subservient partner in a textual
power relationship.
Cultural approaches to translation today are as
diverse as the contexts from which they emerge. The
common factor is a reevaluation of the role of trans-
lation in the transmission of knowledge across cultur-
al boundaries and, in terms of approaches to the study
of translation, a rapprochement with such disciplines
as anthropology, sociology, ethnography, politics and
international studies, and cultural studies. The cultur-
al turn in translation studies means that the act of
translation can be examined holistically, as a textual
practice that is located in time and space and that
has its own history. It would be far too simplistic
to suggest that the cultural turn was a new phenom-
enon of the 1990s, since there was obviously a long
tradition in the study and practice of translation that
gave considerable weight to extratextual factors, but
it is clear that what has happened in translation stud-
ies since the 1980s reflects similar parallel trends in
other disciplines. To this extent, the cultural turn
marks a shift in the study of translation that serves
to raise the profile of translation and to underline its
interdisciplinarity.
See also: Approaches to Translation, Linguistic; Function-
al Approaches to Translation: Skopos Theory.
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