Translator: Visibility, Ethics, and Sociology

The Role of Translator: Visibility, Ethics, and Sociology

• The role of the translator involves visibility, ethics, and sociology.

'Invisibility' of the Translator

• Lawrence Venuti is prominent in translation studies known for his concept of the "invisibility" of the translator.
• Venuti's seminal work, "The Translator's Invisibility: A History of Translation," explores how translation practices in English-speaking cultures has contributed to the marginalization of translators. The book was initially published in 1995 and then revised in 2008.
• Invisibility, according to Venuti, describes the translator's situation and activity in contemporary British and American cultures.

Venuti sees this invisibility as typically being produced.

• Translators produce an idiomatic and 'readable' target text (TT) which creates an 'illusion of transparency'. They translate 'fluently' into English.
• Translated texts, whether fiction or nonfiction, are typically read in the target culture.
• A translated text is judged acceptable by most publishers, reviewers, and readers when it reads fluently.
• The absence of any linguistic or stylistic peculiarities making it seem transparent that it reflects the foreign writer's personality, intention or the essential meaning of the foreign text.

Historical Context

• Venuti traces the history of translation practices in English-speaking cultures.
• Since Dryden's time, there is a tendency to conceal the act of translation.
• This tendency has resulted in translations being viewed as derivative, of secondary importance, and not a form of literary scholarship.

Examples Illustrating Invisibility

• Fluent Translation: Creating an 'Illusion of Transparency'
• In translating Gabriel García Márquez's 'One Hundred Years of Solitude', the English version by Gregory Rabassa aims for a smooth reading experience that is relatable for English speakers, leading readers to perceive it as an original work rather than a translation.
• Reading Translated Texts in Target Culture: Readers engage with translated works like Madame Bovary without recognizing translation involvement.
• If culturally specific elements are altered for fluency, readers may not appreciate the original context or nuances, reinforcing the translator's invisibility.

Domestication and Foreignization

• Foreignization: A translation strategy that retains elements of the source language and culture.
• Its purpose that seeks to expose the reader to the foreignness of the text.
• Characteristics of Foreignization:
  • It maintains source language syntax and lexicon.
  • It uses loanwords, calques, and unadapted cultural references.
  • Highlights the presence of the translator.
• Examples of Foreignization:
  • Retaining honorifics like "san" in Japanese or "Señor" in Spanish.
  • Keeping idiomatic expressions like "C'est la vie" instead of "That's life".
  • Using untranslated words like "samurai" or "hygge."
• Benefits of Foreignization:
  • Preserves the authenticity of the source text.
  • Increases cultural awareness.
  • Challenges linguistic imperialism.
• Challenges of Foreignization:
  • Can create difficulties for target readers.
  • Might lead to misunderstandings.
  • Can be seen as "resisting” fluency.
• Domestication: A translation strategy that adapts the text to the target culture and prioritizes readability and fluency.
• Characteristics of Domestication:
  • Adjusts cultural references to fit the target audience.
  • Uses idiomatic expressions familiar to target readers.
  • Adopts natural-sounding syntax and lexicon.
• Examples of Domestication:
  • Translating "manga" (Japanese comics) as "comic book."
  • Changing food references (e.g., "croissant" to "pastry").
  • Adapting humor, metaphors, and idioms to be culturally relevant.
• Benefits of Domestication:
  • Improves readability and comprehension.
  • Makes the text more relatable for target audiences.
  • Reduces cognitive load for readers unfamiliar with foreign cultures.
• Challenges of Domestication:
  • Can result in cultural erasure.
  • Might oversimplify or distort the original meaning.
  • Limits exposure to the source culture.
• Translations often mix both strategies. Domestication and foreignization are not exact opposites.
• Balance depends on the purpose of translation and audience.
• Ethical Considerations in Domestication and Foreignization:
  • Translator's responsibility in preserving cultural identity.
  • Power dynamics in translation—who decides what is translated and how?

Fluency and Resistancy

• Fluency: The ease with which a translated text reads in the target language.
  • It minimizes the unfamiliarity of the source text and often hides the work of the translator.
• Resistancy: keeping parts of the original text that might feel foreign or unfamiliar and not changing original text to fit the target language smoothly.
  • Makes translation more visible and let the readers engage with the unfamiliar words from the source text.
• Domestication and Foreignization are Ethical Features: Choices wherein reflecting how translators approach foreign texts and culture.
• Fluency and Resistancy are Discursive Features and affects how readers process a translated text.

Different Ways to Analyze and Study Translation Practices

• Ways to analyze and study translation practices: comparing the source text (ST) and target text (TT), interviewing translators, interviewing publishers, editors, and agents, studying market trends, examining translation contracts and translator visibility, visibility of translation on a product, and analyzing translation reviews.

Emotions and Translation

• Emotions are complex reactions comprising experiential, behavioural, and physiological components.
• Emotions are affective factors that are central to cognitive processes and play a significant role in the practice of translation.
• In 1996, Jääskeläinen observed that affective factors, whether personal involvement, commitment, motivation, or attitude is a relevant variable to take in account for translational behavior.

The study of emotions in translation expands in three areas:

• emotion as a property of the text that is translated
• emotion as a feature of translators
• emotion as experienced by the receivers of translations.

Emotions and Source Texts

• Literary translators wrote about and described their experiences of conveying source text emotionality (e.g. Shields & Clarke 2011).
• In 2007, Julia Rose wrote the first unabridged translation of Victor Hugo's novel, Les Miserables, with an introspective analysis of translating the emotionality in the book.
• Texts of an emotional and sensitive nature can be found in translation fields such as legal and clinical settings.
• The study of the Italian translation of a UNICEF report on the state of the world's children (Abbamonte and Cavaliere, 2006).
• Wittwer in 2007 studied emotional features in medical texts in pediatrics, focusing on the difficulty in preserving the emotional impact of source texts when discussing sensitive topics, such as childhood diseases.

The Translator’s Emotions

• Translation research now focuses on how translators interact with their environment, their tools, each other, and their colleagues (Risku, 2014)
• Emotional and relational skills are crucial for professional success (Lehr, 2014; Phelan & Courtney, 2019).
• Emotions impact translators' work, influencing age, education, experience, and job satisfaction.
• Key emotional traits found in studies are empathy, self-efficacy, and ambiguity tolerance (Apfelthaler, 2014; Bolaños-Medina, 2014; Rosiers & Eyckmans, 2017).
• Affective profiles shape translation outcomes.
• Personal traits influence translation abilities.
• Emotions are dynamic phenomena and the translator's immediate environment can play an important role in triggering particular emotions.
• Emotional engagement with tools and feedback affects translation quality (Koskinen & Ruokonen, 2017; Lehr, 2014).

Emotions and Target Texts

• Translating a text can evoke emotions in both the translator and the audience.
• Target texts carry the translator's voice, style, and emotional input.
• Translators may unintentionally introduce emotional shifts in their work.
• Some translations can be mentally and physically challenging, leading to non-completion.
• Structured approaches and coping mechanisms can help render emotions effectively in translations.
• Readers interpret emotional intensity in translations based on personal relevance.
• Negative constructions in poetry translations can trigger negative emotions in readers (Kenesei, 2010).
• Audiovisual translations, like audio descriptions, can evoke strong emotions in different audiences (Ramos-Caro, 2016).
• Research highlights the emotional impact of translation on both translators and recipients.

Prospects for the Future

• Emotions in translation are a growing research area with many unanswered questions.
• Several sub-domains (e.g., marketing, financial) and micro-domains (e.g., novels, short stories) remain underexplored.
• The influence of emotional factors like social awareness, adaptability, and optimism on translation is still unclear.
• Understanding interpersonal emotions and social context could improve translator training and professional tools.
• Research is needed on how cultural context affects translators' emotional experiences, especially in non-Western languages.
• The connection between emotion and translation is still emerging, requiring further investigation.

Ethics of Translation

• Ethics- a branch of philosophy that guides moral decision-making.
• Three Main Branches of Ethics:
  • Meta-Ethics
  • Normative Ethics
  • Applied Ethics

Meta-Ethics in Translation

• Big Questions:
  • Who or what is the source of morality?
  • Are moral values universal or culturally specific?
• Impact on Translation Studies (TS):
  • Postmodern rejection of universal truth
  • Ethical pluralism and the "ethics of alterity"
• Example: Ethical concerns about privacy in globalized translation

Normative Ethics in Translation

• Three Main Approaches:
  • Consequentialism (Utilitarianism) – Focus on outcomes (e.g., maximizing benefit for clients).
  • Deontology (Kantian Ethics) – Focus on rules and duties (e.g., professional codes of conduct).
  • Virtue Ethics (Aristotelian Ethics) - Focus on moral character and professional excellence.
• Example: Shift in Norwegian sign language interpreting from utilitarian to deontological ethics

Applied Ethics in Translation

• Ethics in real-world professional situations
• Professional codes of conduct (Phelan, 2020)
• Ethical dilemmas in contract-based translation
• Risk of blind adherence to ethical codes (Tymoczko, 2007)
• Example: Debate over translators' role in ideological and political empowerment

Chesterman's Models of Translation Ethics

• Ethics of Representation - Fidelity and accuracy (Venuti, 1995)
• Ethics of Service – Client-oriented approach (Functionalism)
• Ethics of Communication - Focus on cross-cultural understanding (Levinas, Pym)
• Norm-Based Ethics – Adherence to professional norms and expectations
• Different models show various ethical responsibilities of translators.

Recent Developments in Translation Ethics

• Growth of Virtue Ethics – Importance of trust and excellence in translation (Pym, 2012)
• Technological Ethical Concerns: Confidentiality & data security, privacy and intellectual property and Al bias and human translator exploitation
• Well-being of Translators - Ethical concerns in high-risk settings (Baker, 2006)
• Sustainability & Ethics – Environmental impact of translation technologies (Cronin, 2020)

Case Study: Domestication and Foreignization Strategy in Translating a Paradise for Travelers

• The government heavily advertises Indonesia as a travel destination through banners, brochures, social media, advertising, and other materials.

• The brochure is used to advertise and educate people about a region's tourism.

• The brochure attracts visitors and provide them with needed information in English.

• Tourism translation play an unparalleled role in promoting Indonesia's tourism industry.

• Translating a language is challenging and relates to different cultures, but cultural translations use 2 translation strategies known as domestication and foreignization (Venuti, 1995)

  • Domestication is to reduce the foreignness of the foreign text to be used in the target language.
  • Foreignization demonstrate how translations is more oriented to the source culture and language

• This study explores the domestication and foreignization process to translating cultural terminology from Indonesian into English.

• Research Questions:

  • The cultural categories are found in the Ende Tourist Brochure
  • The translation strategies (domestication and foreignization) used to translated cultural terms in the Ende Tourist Brochure

• A Descriptive Qualitative Method in the Ende Tourist Brochure "A Paradise for Travelers" has 2 versions- Indonesian (source) and English. The data is words and phrases consisting cultural terms

• Newmark's culture-specific items categorization is used to the determine the cultural terms.

  • Four cultural categories are ecology, material culture, social culture and organizations/customs/activities.

• Among the findings, there were 50 data points.

• From these points the ecology source with target language (see doc), showed language adaptation. Also the material culture with source and target language (see doc), showing language adaptation and how that is used in houses/cities (see doc)

• Social categories for the source to the target language (see doc) and organization based as Artistic (see doc)

• Domestication strategy (see doc) is the most used message because cultural words are known.

• Buaya (Crocodile) [SL]: Menurut cerita penduduk sekitarnya, di dalam danau tersebut terdapat Buaya. [TL] : According to the story that there are crocodiles in this lake.

• Pohon Sukun (Breadfruit Tree) [SL]: Diyakini gagasannya yang cemerlang akan Falsafah Negara Pancasila terlahir dalam Proses Permenungannya di bawah pohon sukun ini. [TL]: Believed that his bright idea about nation philosophy of Pancasila (The five basic Principles of Republic of Indonesia) was leapt in Bung Karno's contemplation under breadfruit tree.

• Foreignization: Since few cultural terms are unfamiliar in the target culture, the translator typically employed foreignization strategies or preserved the original meaning of the source language in the target text.

• Source Language (SL) : Diantaranya Lawo butu yang merupaka sejenis sarung atau lawo sebagai kostum para penari mure, yakni tarian khas Nggela yang merupakn tarian sacral sebagai symbol penghormatan kepada wujud yang tertinggi (Dua sai tana goka, Nggai sai watu degu) -Target language (TL) : Most of them still exist with their job in doing various fabric motives that special and interesting, Lawo Butu is a kind of lawo that used by Mure dancers as custom when they dance. Sarong butu is a kind of women ikat sarong.

• 50 cultural words have been analyzed in the Ende Tourist brochure using Domestication and Foreignization methods. The results are 41 words have been domesticated while 9 ones showed the foreignization method.

• Translators often apply domestication by including the source text into the target culture. Select domestication to make translations natural/easy.

• Translator takes the OG text and makes original unfamiliar traditions through the use of Domestication. The translator is making an original translation and hopes that it will have greater impact on the reader .