Translation Studies: Chapter 8 PDF

1 J. Munday, Introducing Translation Studies Chapter 8: Varieties of Cultural Studies (pp. 126-143) Introduction Susan Bassnett and Andre Lefevere dismiss linguistic theories of translation. They consider the text in its cultural environment. They go beyond language and focus on the interaction bet...

1 J. Munday, Introducing Translation Studies Chapter 8: Varieties of Cultural Studies (pp. 126-143) Introduction Susan Bassnett and Andre Lefevere dismiss linguistic theories of translation. They consider the text in its cultural environment. They go beyond language and focus on the interaction between translation and culture. They concentrate on the way in which culture impacts and constrains translation and on the larger issues of context, history and convention. The cultural turn refers to the move from translation as text to translation as culture and politics. They focus on the power exercised in and on the publishing industry in pursuit of specific ideologies, feminist writing and translation, translation as appropriation, translation and colonisation, and translation as rewriting. Translation as Rewriting Lefevere argues that the people involved in power positions rewrite literature and govern its consumption by the general public. The motivation for such rewriting can be ideological (conforming to or rebelling against the dominant ideology) or poetological (conforming to or rebelling against the dominant poetics). Edward Fitzgerald translated (rewrote) the Persian poet Omar Khayyam in the nineteenth century. Fitzgerald regarded the Persians as inferior and thought he should “take liberties” in the translation in order to “improve” on the original. He also made it conform to the expected Western literary conventions of his time. Lefevere claims that translation is the most obviously recognisable type of rewriting. He adds that it is potentially the most influential because it is able to project the image of an author and those works beyond the boundaries of their culture of origin. According to Lefevere, the literary system is controlled by three main factors: 1-Professinals within the literary system include critics and reviewers (whose comments affect the reception of a work), teachers (who often decide whether a book is studied or not) and translators themselves, who decided on the poetics and at times the ideology of the translated text. 2-Patronage outside the literary system represents the powers (persons and institutions) that can further or hinder the reading, writing and rewriting of literature. Lefevere identifies three elements to this patronage: ​ a. The ideological component constrains the choice of subject and the form of its ​ presentation. ​ b. The economic component concerns the payment of writers and rewriters. ​ c. The status component is about the beneficiary often expected to conform to the ​ patron’s expectations. 3-The dominant poetics influences literary devices such as genres and the relation of literature to the social system in which it exists.  2 Institutions try to enforce the dominant poetics of a period by using the yardstick against which current production is measured. Accordingly, certain works of literature are elevated to the level of classics and thus canonised while others are rejected. Poetics, Ideology and Translation The dominant poetics is often determined by ideology. For instance, the spread of Islam from Arabia led to the poetics of Arabic being adopted by other languages such as Turkish, Persian and Urdu. Lefevere refers to the translator’s ideology, or the ideology imposed on the translator by patronage. The 1947 Dutch edition of the diary of Anne Frank – prepared in conjunction with Anna’s father – doctors the image of the girl by omitting paragraphs relating to her sexuality. In the German translation published in 1950, derogatory remarks about Germans are omitted or toned down. Translation and Gender: Simon approaches translation from a gender-studies angle. She sees a language of sexism in translation studies with its images of dominance, fidelity, faithfulness and betrayal. Typical is the seventeenth-century image of les belles infideles, translations into French that were artistically beautiful but unfaithful. Feminists see a parallel between the status of translation, which is often considered to be derivative and inferior to original writing, and that of women, so often repressed in society and literature. One feminist translator: My translation practice is a political activity aimed at making language speak for women and making the feminine visible in language. Simon refers to the treatment of linguistic markers of gender. For example, the neologism auther is used rather than author to emphasise the feminine gender of the writer. Postcolonial translation theory: Spivak is concerned about the ideological consequences of the translation of Third World literature into English and the distortion it entails. Spivak speaks out against Western feminists who expect feminist writing from outside Europe to be translated into the language of power, English. Such translation eliminates the identity of the politically less powerful individuals and cultures. The linking of colonization and translation is accompanied by the argument that translation has played an active role in the colonization process and in disseminating an ideologically motivated image of colonised peoples. 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.