Cultural and ideological turns

8.0 INTRODUCTION

Bassnett and Lefevere go beyond language and focus on the interaction between translation and
culture, on the way in which culture impacts and constrains translation and on ‘the larger issues of
context, history and convention’.

They examine the image of literature that is created by forms such as anthologies, commentaries, film
adaptations and translations, and the institutions that are involved in that process.

8.1 TRANSLATION AS REWRITING

Lefevere focuses particularly on acceptance or rejection of literary texts; that is, ‘issues such as power,
ideology, institution and manipulation’. The people involved in such power positions are the ones
Lefevere sees as ‘rewriting’ literature and governing its consumption by the general public.

An example given by Lefevere (p. 8) is of Edward Fitzgerald, the nineteenth-century translator (or
‘rewriter’) of the Persian poet Omar Khayyam. Fitzgerald considered Persians inferior and felt he should
‘take liberties’ in the translation in order to ‘improve’ on the original, at the same time making it
conform to the expected Western literary conventions of his time.

However, it is translation that is central to Lefevere’s book:

Translation is the most obviously recognizable type of rewriting, and . . . it is potentially the most
influential because it is able to project the image of an author and/or those works beyond the
boundaries of their culture of origin.

Lefevere describes the literary system in which translation functions as being controlled by three main
factors, which are:

(1) professionals within the literary system-who decide which works get to be rewieved, studied
and translated, and how they are to be translated;
(2) patronage outside the literary system-These are ‘the powers (persons, institutions) that can
further or hinder the reading, writing, and rewriting of literature’;

Lefevere identifies three elements to this patronage:

A) The ideological component-which boils down to writers being constrained by the forms
conventions and beliefs that are present in an era, meaning that the coice of a subject and the
way in which it is present are dictated by the conventions of the time.
B) The economic component-which is basically the payment of writers and rewriters given by the
benefactors, employers and patrons.
C) The status component-being funded by patron or trough becoming a member of a certain group
the writer or translator is to behave according to their expectations. They have gained a certain
status and they must act/write in a desired way.
(3) The dominant poetics:
A) Literary devices: These include the range of genres, symbols, leitmotifs and prototypical
situations and characters.
B) The concept of the role of literature;
8.1.1 Poetics, ideology and translation in Lefevere's work

The dominating ideology tends to dictate the way in which the text is tp be translated. The parts of the
source text which would be considered taboo in the SL culture, which could be potentially misiterpreted
or misunderstood are changed in order to conform to the TL culture.

Also, the translators sometimes even change the source text in order to shape the way in which the TL
community will receive the work.

This is very much the case in Lefevere’s discussion (pp. 59–72) of the diary of Anne Frank, a young Dutch
Jewish schoolgirl in hiding with her family during the Second World War. Lefevere describes how the
1947 Dutch edition of the diary – prepared in conjunction with (and ‘rewritten’ by) Anne’s father Otto –
doctors the image of the girl by, for example, omitting paragraphs relating to her sexuality. ‘Unflattering’
descriptions of friends and family are also cut as are sentences referring to several people who
collaborated with the Germans, the latter omissions made at the request of the individuals named.

-alterations to the image of Germans and Germany.

8.2 TRANSLATION AND GENDER

Feminists saw the relation link between the inferior position of women in society and the status of
translation which is often considered inferior to the original text.

Simon proposes a way of emphasising the feminine in translationg texts through example of adding
certain linguistics markers of gender.

Examples quoted from de Lotbinière-Harwood’s translations include using a bold ‘e’ in the word one to
emphasize the feminine, capitalization of M in HuMan Rights to show the implicit sexism, the neologism
auther (as opposed to author) to translate the French auteure, and the female personification of nouns
such as aube (dawn) with the English pronoun she.

Simon (pp. 68–71) points out that the great classics of Russian literature were initially made available in
English in translations produced mainly by one woman, Constance Garnett. Her sixty volumes of
translation include almost the entire work of Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekov and Gogol.
Similarly, key works of literature in German were translated by women translators.

8.2.1 The translation of gay texts

Harvey draws on the theory of contact in language practice and on politeness to examine the
homosexual discourse of camp in English and French texts and in translations.

In general, therefore, markers of gay identity either disappear or are made pejorative in the TT. Harvey
links these findings to issues of the target culture, discussing how, for instance, the suppression of the
label gay in the translation ‘reflects a more general reluctance in France to recognize the usefulness of
identity categories as the springboard for political action’ (p. 415) and a ‘relative absence of radical gay
(male) theorizing in contemporary France’.

8.3 POSTCOLONIAL TRANSLATION THEORY

Colonialism is generally used to cover studies of the history of the former colonies, studies of powerful
European empires, resistance to the colonialist powers and, more broadly, studies of the effect of the
imbalance of power relations between colonized and colonizer.

Simon highlights (pp. 145–7) Spivak’s concerns about the ideological consequences of the translation of
‘Third World’ literature into English and the distortion this entails.

Spivak speaking out against western feminists who expect feminist writing from outside Europe to be
translated into the language of power, English. Such translation, in Spivak’s view, is often expressed in
‘translatese’, which eliminates the identity of politically less powerful individuals and cultures.

Spivak’s critique of western feminism and publishing is most biting when she suggests that feminists
from the hegemonic countries should show real solidarity with women in postcolonial contexts by
learning the language in which those women speak and write. In Spivak’s opinion, the ‘politics of
translation’ currently gives prominence to English and the other ‘hegemonic’ languages of the ex-
colonizers.

Niranjana’s focus is on the way translation into English has generally been used by the colonial power to
construct a rewritten image of the ‘East’ that has then come to stand for the truth. She gives other
examples of the colonizer’s imposition of ideological values.

8.3.1 The Irish context

Cronin (p. 3) takes issue with Niranjana and other writers on translation and postcolonialism because
this cultural oppresion and conflict is not found only between the east and the west. He says that they
neglected the so-called internal colonialism within Europe itself. Cronin himself concentrates on the role
of translation in the linguistic and political battle between the Irish and English languages.

Throughout history, the English language has been forced onto the Irish many times and in various ways.
When it comes to translation, he claims that the English used it many times to create an image of Irish
and Ireland they desired. As a result the Irish began to translate their works themselves and managed
this way to produce a much more faithful image of their country and culture. On the bad end, this
resulted in the English becoming even more present in Ireland than before.