ETI 319 Translation Theory PDF

**ETI 319 Translation Theory** **The following summary is based on the book by J. Munday entitled *Introducing Translation Studies* (pp.170-188)** **Polysystem Theory** In 1970s, polysystem theory emerged. The theory saw translated literature as a system operating in the larger social, literary a...

**ETI 319 Translation Theory** **The following summary is based on the book by J. Munday entitled *Introducing Translation Studies* (pp.170-188)** **Polysystem Theory** In 1970s, polysystem theory emerged. The theory saw translated literature as a system operating in the larger social, literary and historical systems of the target culture. Polysystem theory was developed in the 1970s by the Israeli scholar Itamar Even-Zohar who worked on literary historiography and linguistics. He was inspired by Russian Formalists for whom a literary work was not studied in isolation but as part of a literary system. It is a system in itself and it is defined as 'a system of functions of the literary order which are in continual interrelationship with other orders'. So, literature is part of the social, cultural, literary and historical framework and it is the key concept of the system where there is an ongoing dynamic of 'mutation' and struggle for the primary position in the literary canon. Even-Zohar reacts against the traditional aesthetic approach which had focused on 'high' literature and had disregarded as unimportant literary systems or genres such as children's literature, thrillers and the whole system of translated literature. Even-Zohar emphasizes that translated literature operates as a system in itself: \* in the way the TL culture selects works for translation; \* in the way translation norms, behaviour and policies are influenced by other co-systems. Even-Zohar focuses on the relations between all these systems in the overarching concept. He calls this new term, the polysystem. He defines this as follows "a **multiple** system, a system of various systems which **intersect** with each other and partly **overlap**, using concurrently different options, yet functioning as **one structured whole**, whose members are interdependent." The interaction and positioning of these systems occurs in a dynamic hierarchy, changing according to the historical moment. If, at a given point, the highest position is occupied by an innovative literary type, then the lower strata are likely to be occupied by increasingly conservative types. On the other hand, if the conservative forms are at the top, innovation and renewal are likely to come from the lower strata. Otherwise a period of stagnation occurs. This '**dynamic process of evolution'** is vital to the polysystem, which indicates that the relations between innovatory and conservative systems are in a constant state of flux and competition. Because of this flux, the position of translated literature is not fixed either. It may occupy a primary or a secondary position in the polysystem. If it is **primary**, 'it participates actively in shaping the centre of the polysystem'. It is likely to be innovatory and linked to major events of literary history as they are taking place. It often leads writers produce the most important translations and translations are a leading factor in the formation of new models for the target culture, introducing new poetics and techniques. Even-Zohar gives three major cases when translated literature occupies the primary position: \(1) When a 'young' literature is being established and looks initially to more established literatures for ready-made models. An example is literature in Finnish, which developed in the nineteenth century using the models of realist novels from France and Britain. \(2) When a literature is 'peripheral' or 'weak' and it imports those literary types which it is lacking. This can happen when a smaller nation or language is dominated by the culture of a larger one. Even-Zohar sees that 'all sorts of peripheral literature may in such cases consist of translated literature'. This happens at various levels. For instance, in modern Spain regions such as Galicia import many translations from the dominant Castilian Spanish, while Spain itself imports canonized and non-canonized literature from the English-speaking world. When we think of other genres, the pervasive influence of English as the main international language for the dissemination of science is leading to the displacement of some local scientific traditions (e.g. in Scandinavian languages) even without translation. \(3) When there is a critical turning point in literary history at which established models are no longer considered sufficient, or when there is a vacuum in the literature of the country. Where no type holds sway, it is easier for foreign models to assume primacy. This can be domain specific, as occurred with the early twentieth-century translations of new German psychoanalytic work (Freud, Jung etc.) into languages such as English and French. And in India, the popularity of science-fiction writing began with the importation of models from English. If translated literature assumes a **secondary** position, then it represents a peripheral system within the polysystem. It has no major influence over the central system and even becomes a conservative element, preserving conventional forms and conforming to the literary norms of the target system. Even-Zohar says that this secondary position is the 'normal' one for translated literatures. However, translated literature itself is stratified. Some translated literature may be secondary while others, translated from major source literatures, are primary. An example Even-Zohar gives is of the Hebrew literary polysystem published between the two world wars, when translations from Russian were primary but translations from English, German and Polish were secondary. If it is **primary**, translators do not feel constrained to follow target literature models and are more prepared to break conventions. They thus often produce a TT that is a close match in terms of **adequacy, reproducing the textual relations** of the ST. The influence of the foreign language model may itself then lead to the production of new models in the TL, for non-translated as well as translated languages. On the other hand, if translated literature is **secondary**, translators tend to use existing target-culture term 'adequate'. Edwin Gentzler stresses the way polysystem theory represents an important advance for translation studies. The advantages are: \(1) literature itself is studied alongside the social, historical and cultural forces; \(2) Even-Zohar moves away from the isolated study of individual texts towards the study of translation within the cultural and literary systems in which it functions; \(3) The non-prescriptive definition of equivalence and adequacy allows for variation according to the social, historical and cultural situation of the text. However, Gentzler also outlines **criticisms** of polysystem theory. These include: \(1) overgeneralization to 'universal laws' of translation based on relatively little evidence; \(2) an over-reliance on an historically based Formalist model which, following Even-Zohar's own model of evolving trends, might be inappropriate for translated texts in the 1970s and beyond; \(3) the tendency to focus on the abstract model rather than the 'real-life' constraints placed on texts and translators; \(4) the question as to how far the supposed scientific model is really objective. **Toury and descriptive translation studies** Gideon Toury was working with Even-Zohar in Tel Aviv. After his early polysystem work on the sociocultural conditions which determine the translation of foreign literature into Hebrew, Toury focused on developing a general theory of translation. Toury proposes just such a methodology for the branch of descriptive translation studies (DTS). For Toury, translations first and foremost occupy a position in the social and literary systems of the target culture; they are 'facts of target cultures: on occasion facts of a peculiar status, sometimes even constituting identifiable (sub)-systems of their own'. Their position determines the translation strategies that are employed. With this approach, Toury is continuing and building on the polysystem work of Even-Zohar and on earlier versions of his own work. He proposes the following three-phase methodology for systematic DTS, incorporating a description of the product and the wider role of the sociocultural system: \(1) Situate the text within the target culture system, looking at its significance or acceptability. \(2) Undertake a textual analysis of the ST and the TT in order to identify relationships between corresponding segments in the two texts. Toury calls these segments 'coupled pairs'. This leads to the identification of translation shifts, both 'obligatory' and 'non-obligatory'. \(3) Attempt generalizations about the patterns identified in the two texts, which helps to reconstruct the process of translation for this ST--TT pair. An important additional step is the repeating of these phases for other pairs of similar texts. This replicability allows the corpus to be extended and a descriptive profile of translations to be built up according to genre, period, author, etc. In this way, the norms pertaining to each kind of translation can be identified. The second step of Toury's methodology is one of the most controversial areas. The decisions on which ST and TT segments to examine and what the relationships are between them is an apparatus which Toury states should be supplied by translation theory. He also admits that, in practice, no translation is ever fully 'adequate'. For this contradiction, and for considering the hypothetical invariant to be a universal given, he has been roundly criticized. Both flexibility and lack of consistency are revealed in the analysis contained in Toury's case studies. **The concept of norms of translation behaviour** The aim of Toury's case studies is to distinguish trends of translation behaviour, to make generalizations regarding the decision-making processes of the translator and then to 'reconstruct' the norms that have been in operation in the translation and make hypotheses that can be tested by future descriptive studies. The definition of norms used by Toury is: the translation of general values or ideas shared by a community -- as to what is right or wrong, adequate or inadequate -- into performance instructions appropriate for and applicable to particular situations. These norms are sociocultural constraints specific to a culture, society and time. An individual is said to acquire them from the general process of education and socialization, learning what kind of behaviour is expected in a given situation. Thus, university students may learn norms for translation from their tutors and these may even be set out formally in a handbook as a set of evaluation criteria. Rules, supported by legislation, are the strongest constraints, since breaking a rule will normally incur a formal legal penalty or caution. In a professional translation context, this could be the breaking of a confidentiality agreement; or, in textual terms, committing a gross grammatical error in a translation test, where such accuracy is highly valued and which would usually lead to the loss of marks. Norms, as generally agreed forms of behaviour, are partly prescriptive in nature but weaker than rules. Violating them (for instance, writing a very informal translation commentary in an academic setting) might well lead to negative evaluation. Toury considers translation an activity governed by norms, and these norms 'determine the (type and extent of) equivalence manifested in actual translations'. This suggests the potential ambiguity of the term 'norm'. Toury uses it first as a descriptive analytical category to be studied through regularity of behaviour -- norms are 'options that translators in a given socio-historical context select on a regular basis'. Although Toury focuses initially on the analysis of the translation product, he emphasizes that this is to identify the decision making processes of the translator. From the examination of texts, to the products of norm-governed activity Toury sees different kinds of norms operating at different stages of the translation process: (1) the initial norm; (2) preliminary norms; and (3) operational norms. The basic **initial norm** refers to a general choice made by translators. Thus, translators can subject themselves to the norms realized in the ST or to the norms of the target culture or language. If it is towards the ST, then the TT will be **adequate**; if the target culture norms prevail, then the TT will be **acceptable**. For example, a translation of a scientific text from Portuguese to English may reproduce the complex sentence structure and argumentation patterns of the ST to give an 'adequate' translation, or alternatively rewrite the text to conform to the clarity of argumentation and standard SVO and passive structures of English scientific discourse an 'acceptable' translation. The poles of adequacy and acceptability are on a continuum since no translation is ever totally adequate or totally acceptable. According to Toury, shifts are inevitable, norm-governed and 'a true universal of translation'. **Preliminary norms** are translation policy and directness of translation. Translation policy refers to factors determining the selection of texts for translation in a specific language, culture or time. Toury does not pursue this area in his case studies. Directness of translation relates to whether translation occurs through an intermediate language (e.g. Finnish to Greek via English). Questions for investigation include the tolerance of the TT culture to this practice, which languages are involved and whether the practice is camouflaged or not. **Operational norms** describe the presentation and linguistic matter of the TT. These are matricial norms and textual-linguistic norms. Matricial norms relate to the completeness of the TT. Phenomena include omission or relocation of passages, textual segmentation, and the addition of passages or footnotes. Textual-linguistic norms govern the selection of TT linguistic material: lexical items, phrases and stylistic. The examination of the ST and TT should reveal shifts in the relations between the two that have taken place in translation. Here Toury introduces the term 'translation equivalence', but he is at pains to emphasize that it is different from the traditional notion of equivalence. Toury's is a 'functional--relational concept', by which he means that equivalence is assumed between a TT and a ST. This is very important because analysis does not then focus prescriptively on whether a given TT or TT-expression is 'equivalent' to the ST or ST-expression. Instead it focuses on how the assumed equivalence has been realized and is a tool for uncovering 'the underlying concept of translation... \[the\] derived notions of decision-making and the factors that have constrained. **Laws' of translation** Toury hopes that the cumulative identification of norms in descriptive studies will enable the formulation of probabilistic 'laws' of translation and thence of 'universals of translation'. The tentative laws he proposes are listed below: \(1) The law of growing standardization, which states that 'in translation, textual relations obtaining in the original are often modified, sometimes to the point of being totally ignored, in favour of \[more\] habitual options offered by a target repertoire'. This refers to the disruption of the ST patterns in translation and the selection of linguistic options that are more common in the TL. Thus, for example, there will be a tendency towards a general standardization and loss of variation in style in the TT, or at least towards an accommodation to target culture models. Examples would be the standardization of ST culture-specific items such as food terms that do not exist in the target culture (e.g. pitta bread translated as flat bread). \(2) The law of interference, which sees interference from ST to TT as 'a kind of default'. Interference refers to ST linguistic features (mainly lexical and syntactic patterning) that are copied in the TT. These may be 'negative', because they simply create non-normal TT patterns. For example, negative interference occurs when a new term (e.g. benchmarking) is borrowed into the TL or when a collocation is calqued from the ST and creates an unusual collocation in the TT (e.g. Vinay and Darbelnet's example of Normal School from the French élite École Normale). Or the interference may be 'positive'. That is, the existence of features in the ST that will not be abnormal in the TL makes it more likely they will be used by the translator. For instance, subject--verb--object (SVO) order may tend to be selected by a translator working from English into a more flexible TL (e.g. Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish) where SVO is possible but where VSO order is more standard. In this way, the common SL patterns are reinforced in the TT. Toury considers tolerance of interference to depend on sociocultural factors and the prestige of the different literary systems. Thus, there would be greater tolerance when translating from a prestigious language or culture, especially if the target language or culture is considered to be more 'minor'. An example would be translation from Arabic to Malay, where borrowing, especially of religious items, is very common. **Chesterman's translation norms** Chesterman states that all norms 'exert a prescriptive pressure'. Chesterman himself proposes another set of norms, covering the area of Toury's initial and operational norms. These are product or expectancy norms and process or professional norms. 1\. Product or expectancy norms 'are established by the expectations of readers of a translation (of a given type) concerning what a translation (of this type) should be like'. Factors governing these norms include the predominant translation tradition in the target culture, the discourse conventions of the similar TL genre, and economic and ideological considerations. Chesterman makes two important points about these norms: \(a) They allow evaluative judgements about translations since readers have a notion of what is an 'appropriate' or 'acceptable' translation of the specific genre and will approve of a translator who conforms to these expectations. \(b) They are sometimes 'validated by a norm-authority of some kind'. For example, a teacher, literary critic and publisher's reader can confirm the prevalent norm by encouraging translations that conform with that norm. This may be, for instance, that a translation should meet TL criteria of readability and fluency. Alternatively, a literary critic may criticize a translation that offends the norm, and this criticism may damage the reception of that book among ordinary readers. Of course, as Chesterman notes, there may sometimes be a clash between the norm 'authorities' and society in general. 2\. Professional norms 'regulate the translation process itself'. They are subordinate to and determined by expectancy norms. Chesterman proposes three kinds of professional norm. \(a) The accountability norm: This is an ethical norm, dealing with professional standards of integrity and thoroughness. The translator will accept responsibility for the work produced for the commissioner and reader. \(b) The communication norm: This is a social norm. The translator, the communication 'expert', works to ensure maximum communication between the parties. \(c) The 'relation' norm: This is a linguistic norm which deals with the relation between ST and TT. Again, in terms similar to those we discussed in, Chesterman rejects narrow equivalence relations and sees the appropriate relation being judged by the translator 'according to text-type, the wishes of the commissioner, the intentions of the original writer, and the assumed needs of the prospective readers'. As with expectancy norms, these professional norms are validated partly by norm authorities such as other professionals and professional bodies but also partly by their very existence. They include social and ethical factors that are not covered by Toury, and therefore they may be useful in enhancing the description of the overall translation process and product. **ETI 319 Translation Theory** **The following summary is based on the book by J. Munday entitled *Introducing Translation Studies*** (pp. 142-157) **The Hallidayan model of language and discourse** Halliday's model of discourse analysis is based on systemic functional linguistics (SFL) which prepared the study of language as communication. It sees meaning in the writer's linguistic choices and, through a detailed grammar systematically and relates these choices to the text's function in a wider sociocultural framework. In this model, there is a strong interrelation between the linguistic choices, the aims of the communication and the sociocultural framework. The direction of influence is top down. Thus, the sociocultural environment in which the text operates is the highest level. This will include the conventions operating at the time and place of text production. As well as social and cultural factors, it will reflect any political, historical or legal conditions. So, for example, the wave of translation of Latin American fiction in the United States from the 1960s onwards took place in the heightened political climate following the Cuban Revolution of 1959. At that time, various cultural, political and philanthropic organizations in the USA were seeking, for sometimes differing reasons, to build cultural ties with the South. In a different context, translation in the European Union is conditioned by the legal requirement to make available papers and information for the use of the political representatives and for access of the citizens in the twenty four official languages of the Member States. That legal requirement is in part a statement of the identity and recognition of the different languages. The sociocultural environment therefore conditions the genre. Genre itself helps to determine other elements in the systemic framework. The first of these is Register. This should not be confused with the more standard sense of register as formal/informal. In SFL it is a technical term, richer and more complex. It links the variables of social context to language choice and comprises three elements: \- Field: what is being written about, e.g. the price for a delivery of goods; -Tenor: who is communicating and to whom, e.g. a sales representative to a customer; -Mode: the form of communication, e.g. written or spoken, formal or informal. Each of the variables of Register is associated with a strand of meaning, or 'discourse semantics', in the text. These three strands, known as 'metafunctions', are: 1\. ideational: provides a representation of the world or an event; 2\. interpersonal: enacts social relationships; 3\. textual: makes a text hang together in a coherent way. These strands of meaning are formed by the choices of lexis, grammar and syntax ('lexicogrammar') made by the text producer (author, speaker, translator...). **House's model of translation quality assessment** House considers that skopos and other approaches oriented towards the target audience are 'fundamentally misguided' because of their neglect of the ST. Instead, she bases her model on comparative ST--TT analysis leading to the assessment of the quality of the translation, highlighting 'mismatches' or 'errors'. The later models incorporate some of her earlier categories into an openly Hallidayan Register analysis of Field, Tenor and Mode. The model involves a systematic comparison of the textual 'profile' of the ST and of the TT (for this comparison. This comparative model draws on various and sometimes complex taxonomies, but its central point is a Register analysis of both ST and TT. The model focuses on the lexical, syntactic and textual means used to construct Register. House's concept of Register covers a variety of elements, some of which are additional to those stated by Halliday. -Field refers to the subject matter and social action, and covers the specificity of lexical items. -Tenor includes 'the addresser's temporal, geographical and social provenance as well as his \[or her\] intellectual, emotional or affective stance (his \[or her\] "personal viewpoint")' 'Social attitude' refers to formal, consultative or informal style. There is an element of individuality to this, as there is to stance. -Mode relates to 'channel' (spoken/written, etc.) and the degree of participation between addresser and addressee (monologue, dialogue, etc.). The model is applied as follows: 1\. A profile is produced of the ST Register. 2\. To this is added a description of the ST genre realized by the Register. 3\. Together, this allows a 'statement of function' to be made for the ST, including the ideational and interpersonal component of that function (in other words, what information is being conveyed and what the relationship is between sender and receiver). 4\. The same descriptive process is then carried out for the TT. 5\. The TT profile is compared to the ST profile and a statement of 'mismatches' or 'errors' are produced. These are categorized according to the situational dimensions of Register and genre. Such dimensional errors are referred to as 'covertly erroneous errors' to distinguish them from'overtly erroneous errors', which are denotative mismatches (which give an incorrect meaning compared to the ST) and target system errors (which do not conform to the formal grammatical or lexical requirements of the TL). 6\. A 'statement of quality' is then made of the translation. 7\. Finally, the translation can be categorized into one of two types: 'overt translation' or 'covert translation'. In House's confusing definition 'an overt translation is one in which the addressees of the translation text are quite "overtly" not being directly addressed'. In other words, the TT does not pretend to be (and is not represented as being) an original and is clearly not directed at the TT audience. Such is the case with the translation after the event of a Second World War political speech by Winston Churchill. The ST speech was tied to a particular source culture, time and historical context; all these factors are different for the TT. Another example is the translations of literary texts, which are tied to their source culture. With such translations, House believes that equivalence cannot be sought at the level of the individual text function since the discourse worlds in which ST and TT operate are different. Instead, House suggests a 'second level functional equivalence' should be sought, at the level of language, Register and genre. The TT can provide access to the function of the ST, allowing the TT receivers to 'eavesdrop' on the ST. For example, Korean-language readers can use a Korean TT of Churchill's speech to gain access to the ST. But they know they are reading a translation and the individual function of the two texts cannot be the same. A covert translation 'is a translation which enjoys the status of an original source text in the target culture'. The ST is not linked particularly to the ST culture or audience; both ST and TT address their respective receivers directly. Examples given by House are a tourist information booklet, a letter from a company chairman to the shareholders and an article in the magazine The UNESCO Courier. The function of a covert translation is 'to recreate, reproduce or represent in the translated text the function the original has in its discourse world'. It does this without taking the TT reader into the discourse world of the ST. Instead, equivalence is necessary at the level of genre and the individual text function. To achieve this, what House calls a 'cultural filter' needs to be applied by the translator, modifying cultural elements and thus giving the impression that the TT is an original. This may involve changes at the levels of language and Register. The meaning of cultural filter is discussed by House in the context of German--English comparative pragmatic studies. She gives examples of different practices in the two cultures that need to be reflected in translation. For instance, she finds that at that time German business communication tended to prefer a more direct content focus, whereas English was more interpersonal. This would need to be reflected in covert translation, the letter from the company chairman being more interpersonal in English, for instance. House is at pains to point out the fact that the 'overt'--'covert' translation distinction is a cline rather than a pair of binary opposites. A text can be more, or less, covert/overt. Furthermore, if functional equivalence is desired but the ST genre does not exist in the same form in the target culture, the aim should be to produce a version rather than a 'translation'. Such would be the case, for instance, in the manufacturer's instructions for playing a board game, such as chess: imagine a ST which is directed at a ten-year old child and is written incorrespondingly appropriate language (e.g. The castle moves sideways or up/down. Try moving it as far as you want!). If the TL genre conventions called for a more formal text, directed at adults (or, at least, treating children like adults), the instructions would need to be altered in the TL version (e.g. The rook moves horizontally or vertically with no limit on the number of squares it may travel). 'Version' is also the term used to describe apparently unforced changes in genre. For example, among the texts analysed by House is an extract from a polemical history text about civilian Germans' involvement in the holocaust (ST English, TT German). A pattern of differences is identified in the dimensions of Field and Tenor. In Field, the frequency of the word German, which serves to highlight German civilian responsibility in the events, is reduced in the TT. In Tenor, there is a reduction in intensifiers, superlatives and other emotive lexis. This makes the author's critical stance less obvious in the TT, and House even suggests that it has an effect on the genre. Whereas the ST is a controversial popular history book (even though it is based on the author's doctoral thesis), the German TT is a more formal academic treatise. House goes on to suggest possible reasons for these changes, notably pressure from the German publishers for political and marketing reasons. **Baker's text and pragmatic level analysis: a coursebook for translators** House's 1977 book was the first major translation studies work to use Halliday's popular model. Another that later had some considerable influence on translation training is Mona Baker's *In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation*. Baker looks at equivalence at a series of levels: at word, above-word, grammar, thematic structure, cohesion and pragmatic levels. **Thematic and information structures** Baker devotes the most attention to the textual function. Explicit analyses of the ideational and interpersonal functions are fewer. Baker focuses more on thematic considerations, comparing nominalization and verbal forms in theme position in a scientific report in Brazilian Portuguese and English. Thus, for example, the ST begins with a pronominal verbal form: Analisou-se as relações da dopamina cerebral com as funções motoras. \[Analysed-one the relations of dopamine with the motor functions.\] The published English translation presents a normalized word order with the selection of an English passive form in final position. The relations between dopamine and motor functions were analysed. However, for this example Baker recommends a different order of elements so as to meet the genre conventions of English abstracts. This involves the use of the nominalization analysis in first position as the 'theme' of the sentence, along with a different passive verbal form. Baker gives a number of examples from languages such as Portuguese, Spanish and Arabic. These are verb-inflected languages which may place the verb in first or 'theme' position, as in the Brazilian Portuguese example above. This inevitably creates a different thematic pattern in ST and TT. The most important point for ST thematic analysis is that the translator should be aware of the relative markedness of the thematic and information structures. Baker points out that this 'can help to heighten our awareness of meaningful choices made by speakers and writers in the course of communication' and, therefore, help decide whether it is appropriate to translate using a marked form. Again, what is marked varies across languages. Problems in copying the ST pattern into the TT have been treated by many scholars over the years. Thus, Vázquez-Ayora emphasizes that calquing a rigid English word order when translating into a more flexible language such as Spanish would produce a monotonous translation. Gerzymisch-Arbogast, in her detailed study of German and English, considers the German calquing of English pseudo-cleft sentences (e.g. What pleases the public is... What I meant to say was...) to be clumsy. Some languages may also mark theme differently; for instance, Japanese uses the particles ga and wa, rather than word order, to mark new or contrastive themes. That it is the textual function, and most especially the thematic structure, which has most frequently been discussed in works on translation theory is perhaps because of the attention paid to this function by influential monolingual works in text linguistics. Notable early examples are Enkvist (1978) and Beaugrande and Dressler (1981). Cohesion, an element that encompasses the textual and other metafunctions, has also been the subject of a number of studies of translation. **Cohesion** Cohesion is produced by the grammatical and lexical links which help a text hold together. In their seminal study of cohesion in English. ST She told them not to help each other. TT Elle leur dit de ne pas s'áider et de travailler tout seul (lit. 'She told them not to help each other and to work all alone'). Here, the TT explicates what is only an implicit ellipsis in the ST. Blum-Kulka shows how changes in cohesion in translation may bring about functional shifts in texts. She uses the example of a Hebrew translation of a scene from Harold Pinter's play Old Times. In English, the enigmatic opening statement, 'Fat or thin?', is an ellipsis that leaves the referent deliberately unclear (fat man/woman/boy/girl/animal? etc.). Because Hebrew is a gender-inflected language, the TT has to fill out at least part of this ellipsis by making the gender explicit and thus indicating whether the character referred to is a male or female. Similarly, literary translations from verb-inflected languages into English need to make explicit what are sometimes deliberately ambiguous grammatical subject referents. The first line of Argentine author Julio Cortázar's classic 1960s novel Rayuela (Hopscotch) begins with the question ' ?Encontraría a la Maga?' In English the translator has to choose between potential grammatical subjects 'Would I/he/she/you find the Magus?' and decide whether to specify that the Magus is female. **Pragmatics and translation** Baker considers various aspects of pragmatic equivalence in translation, applying relevant linguistic concepts to interlinguistic transfer. Baker's definition of pragmatics is as follows: Pragmatics is the study of language in use. It is the study of meaning, not as generated by the linguistics system but as conveyed and manipulated by participants in a communicative situation. In this section, we briefly consider three major pragmatic concepts: coherence, presupposition and implicature. The coherence of a text, related to cohesion, 'depends on the hearer's or receiver's expectations and experience of the world'. Clearly this may not be the same for the ST and TT reader. Baker gives the example of a passage about the London department store Harrods. In order to make sense of the passage, the reader needs to know that the flagship Harrods and the description the splendid Knightsbridge store are synonyms. TT readers unfamiliar with London may not know this. The Arabic translation therefore makes the link explicit with the addition to the name of a gloss incorporating the repetition of the word store. The area of presupposition is closely related to coherence. It is defined by Baker as 'pragmatic inference'. Presupposition relates to the linguistic and extralinguistic knowledge the sender assumes the receiver to have or which are necessary in order to retrieve the sender's message. Thus, in the European Parliament in 1999, Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan's phrase let me now turn to bananas would presuppose that the receiver knows about the then current trade dispute between the European Union and the United States over banana imports. Or at least it would presuppose that the receiver can access this information from the linguistic and extralinguistic contexts. This is most likely for the immediate receivers, since they were Members of the European Parliament and were aware of the issue. Similarly, the phrase I discussed this issue in Washington presupposes knowledge that Washington in this context refers to the seat of government of the United States and the venue for Sir Leon Brittan's talks. The problem for the translator occurs, of course, when the TT receivers cannot be assumed to possess the same background knowledge as the ST receivers, either because of cultural differences and/or because the text is being translated after a time gap when the original information is no longer activated by the reference. This is the kind of problem which Nida recognized with his concept of dynamic equivalence. Typical is the example of the metaphorical use of the place name Mohács in a Hungarian text. The name would mean little to most receivers in other cultures, so a translator would need to replace it with an explicitation of its historical significance as the site of a crushing defeat. Baker gives more attention to implicature, another form of pragmatic inference, which she defines as 'what the speaker means or implies rather than what s/he says'. The concept of implicature was developed by philosopher of language Paul Grice (1913--1988), who described a set of 'rules' or 'maxims' that operate in normal co-operative conversation (Grice 1975). These are as follows: \(1) Quantity: Give the amount of information that is necessary. Do not give too much or too little. (2) Quality: Say only what you know to be true or what you can support. \(3) Relevance: What you say should be relevant to the conversation. \(4) Manner: Say what you need to say in a way that is appropriate to the message you wish to convey and which (normally) will be understood by the receiver. In addition, some theorists add the maxim of (5) politeness: Be polite in your comments. Participants in conversations assume the person to whom they are speaking is (subconsciously) following these maxims and they themselves co-operate by trying to make sense of what is being said. In turn, they also tend to be cooperative in what they say and the way they say it. Particular problems are also posed for the translator when the TL culture operates with different maxims. An example is some of the translations from English into Arabic of the Harry Potter books, which delete references to alcohol and pork and tone down references to sorcery. This shows a difference in the operation of the maxims of manner and politeness in the two cultures. This is also the case in an example that occurred during negotiations between the USA and Japan in 1970. The Japanese Premier replies to American concerns on textile exports by saying zensho shimasu ('I'll handle it as well as I can'). This is understood by the US President as a literal promise to sort out a problem (i.e. it obeys the US-cultural quality and relevance maxims), whereas the Japanese phrase is really a polite formula for ending the conversation (i.e. it obeys the Japanese-cultural maxim of politeness). As Baker notes, this clearly shows that translators need to be fully aware of the different co-operative principles in operation in the respective languages and cultures. **Hatim and Mason: the levels of context and discourse** Two other works that developed out of the Hallidayan model of language have been especially influential for translation studies: Basil Hatim and Ian Mason's Discourse and the Translator (1990) and The Translator as Communicator (1997). They pay extra attention to the realization in translation of ideational and interpersonal functions (rather than just the textual function) and incorporate into their model the level of discourse. An example of Hatim and Mason's analysis of functions is their examination of a key passage from Albert Camus's novel L' Étranger \[The Outsider\] in which the main character, Meursault, shoots and kills an Arab on a beach near Algiers. Changes in the transitivity structure in the English translation are seen to cause a shift in the ideational function of the text, affecting field. The passage in the French ST contains eight process verbs, of which four indicate intentional action by Meursault. These are: 'j'ai crispé ma main', 'j'ai touché le ventre poli de la crosse', 'j'ai tiré', 'je frappais sur la porte du malheur' \[lit. 'I clenched my hand', 'I touched the polished belly of the \[revolver\] butt', 'I fired ' and 'I was striking on the door of misfortune'\]. In translation, these become: 'my grip closed ', 'the smooth underbelly of the butt jogged in my palm', 'I fired ' and 'another loud, fateful rap on the door of my undoing'. In other words, the translation only shows one real action process (I fired); the others have become actions that occur to Meursault and over which it seems he has little control. Hatim and Mason's conclusion is that the pattern of shifts in the TT has made Meursault more passive. However, they also make the point that the reason for these shifts may be the translator's overall reading of the novel, in which Meursault's passivity is a key feature of his character. Hatim and Mason also consider shifts in modality (the interpersonal function) with an example of trainee interpreters' problems with the recognition and translation of a French conditional of allegation or rumour in a European Parliament debate. The phrase in question -- 'un plan de restructuration qui aurait été \['would have been'\] préparé par les administrateurs judiciaires' -- calls for an indication of modality of possibility in English, such as 'a rescue plan which was probably prepared by the administrators' or 'a rescue plan which it is rumoured was prepared by the administrators'. The majority of the trainee interpreters in Hatim and Mason's sample incorrectly rendered the phrase by a factual statement such as 'had been prepared'. This altered the truth value of the message in the TT. Hatim and Mason's 'foundations of a model for analysing texts' incorporate and go beyond House's Register analysis and Baker's pragmatic analysis. They combine the kind of bottom-up analysis discussed in the Camus example with some top-down consideration of the higher levels of discourse. Language and texts are considered to be realizations of sociocultural messages and power relations. They thus represent discourse in its wider sense, defined as: modes of speaking and writing which involve social groups in adopting a particular attitude towards areas of sociocultural activity (e.g. racist discourse, bureaucratese, etc.). **ETI 319 Translation Theory** **The following summary is based on the book by J. Munday entitled *Introducing Translation Studies* (pp.198-213)** **Introduction** Bassnett and Lefevere focus on the interaction between translation and culture. 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. Thus, the move from translation as text to translation as culture and politics is what Mary Snell-Hornby (1990), in her paper in the same collection, terms 'the cultural turn'. In their book *Translation, History and Culture* Bassnett and Lefevere influenced the beginning of a period in which the cultural turn held sway in translation studies. **Translation as rewriting** André Lefevere (1945--1996) worked in comparative literature departments in Leuven (Belgium) and then in the USA at the University of Texas, Austin. His work in translation Studies developed out of his strong links with polysystem theory and the Manipulation School. Lefevere's later work on translation and culture in many ways represents a bridging point to the 'cultural turn'. His ideas are most fully developed in his book *Translation, Rewriting and the* *Manipulation of Literary Fame*. Lefevere focuses particularly on the examination of 'very concrete factors' that systemically govern the reception, 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. 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/preferred poetics). An example given by Lefevere is of Edward Fitzgerald, the nineteenth-century translator (or 'rewriter') of the Rubayait by Persian poet, mathematician and astronomer Omar Khayyám (1048--1131). Fitzgerald considered Persians inferior and felt he should 'take liberties' in the translation in order to 'improve' on the original. According to Davis, Fitzgerald made it conform to the expected western literary conventions of his time and the work was a phenomenal commercial success. Lefevere says "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." For Lefevere, the literary system in which translation functions is controlled by two main factors, which are: (1) **professionals within the literary system**, who [partly] determine the dominant poetics; and (2) **patronage outside the literary system**, which [partly] determines the ideology. The professionals within the literary system include critics and reviewers (whose comments affect the reception of a work), academics and teachers (who often decide whether a book is studied or not) and translators themselves, who decide on the poetics and at times influence the ideology of the translated text (as in the Fitzgerald example). The patronage outside the literary system means 'the powers (persons, institutions) that can further or hinder the reading, writing, and rewriting of literature'. Patrons may be: - influential and powerful individuals in a given historical era (e.g. Elizabeth I in Shakespeare's England, Hitler in 1930s Germany, etc.); - groups of people (publishers, the media, a political class or party); - institutions which regulate the distribution of literature and literary ideas (national academies, academic journals and, above all, the educational establishment). Lefevere identifies three elements to this patronage: \(1) **The ideological component:** This constrains the choice of subject and the form of its presentation. Lefevere adopts a definition of ideology that is not restricted to the political. It is, more generally and perhaps less clearly, 'that grillwork of form, convention, and belief which orders our actions'. He sees patronage as being mainly ideologically focused. \(2) **The economic component**: This concerns the payment of writers and rewriters. In the past, this was in the form of a pension or other regular payment from a benefactor. Nowadays, it is more likely to be translator's fees and in some cases royalty payments. Other professionals, such as critics and teachers, are, of course, also paid or funded by patrons (e.g. by newspaper publishers, universities and the State). \(3) **The status component**: This occurs in many forms. In return for economic payment from a benefactor or literary press, the beneficiary is often expected to conform to the patron's expectations. Similarly, membership of a group involves behaving in a way conducive to supporting that group: Lefevere gives the example of the Beat poets using the City Lights bookstore in San Francisco as a meeting point in the 1950s. Patronage is termed **undifferentiated** if all three components are provided by the same person or group. This might be the case with a totalitarian ruler whose efforts are directed at maintaining the stability of the system. Patronage is differentiated when the three components are not dependent on one another. Thus, a popular best-selling author may receive high economic rewards but accrue little status in the eyes of the hierarchy of the literary system. Patronage wields most power in the operation of ideology, while the professionals have most influence in determining the poetics. As far as the **dominant poetics** is concerned, Lefevere analyses two components: \(1) **Literary devices:** These include the range of genres, symbols, leitmotifs and narrative plot and characters, which may become formalized as in the case of European fairytales (e.g. princesses, princes, evil stepmothers) or Japanese manga comics. \(2) **The concept of the role of literature**: This is the relation of literature to the social system in which it exists. The struggle between different literary forms is a feature of polysystem theory. Lefevere takes this idea further and looks at the role of institutions in determining the poetics. He says: Institutions enforce or, at least, try to enforce the dominant poetics of a period by using it as the yardstick against which current production is measured. Accordingly, certain works of literature will be elevated to the level of 'classics' within a relatively short time after publication, while others are rejected, some to reach the exalted position of a classic later, when the dominant poetics has changed. Classic status is enhanced by a book's inclusion in school or university reading lists, in anthologies or its use as a comparison in reviews. With respect to an established canon, Lefevere sees 'clear indication of the conservative bias of the system itself and the power of rewriting' because such classics may never lose their status -- they are reinterpreted or 'rewritten' to conform to changes in dominant poetics. This is the case, for example, with the Greek Classics, which continue to exert influence on western European literature. Thus, poetics may transcend languages and groups -- claims that this occurs in the literary traditions shared by the four thousand languages and communities of sub-Saharan Africa. But, importantly, in the final instance and at the higher level, the dominant poetics tends to be determined by ideology: for instance, the early spread of Islam from Arabia led to the poetics of Arabic being adopted by other languages such as Persian, Turkish and Urdu. **Poetics, ideology and translation in Lefevere's work** Lefevere claims: "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." For him, the most important consideration is the ideological one because it refers to the translator's ideology or the ideology imposed upon the translator by patronage. The poetological consideration refers to the dominant poetics in the TL culture. Together, ideology and poetics dictate the translation strategy and the solution to specific problems. **Translation and gender** The interest of cultural studies in translation inevitably took translation studies away from purely linguistic analysis and brought it into contact with other disciplines. Sherry Simon, in her *Gender in Translation: Cultural Identity and the Politics of Transmission* (1996), criticizes translation studies for often using the term culture 'as if it referred to an obvious and unproblematic reality'. Lefevere for example, had defined it as simply 'the environment of a literary system'. Sherry 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. Feminist theorists also 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. This is the core of feminist translation theory, which seeks to as Simon states 'identify and critique the tangle of concepts which relegates both women and translation to the bottom of the social and literary ladder'. But Simon takes this further and says "For feminist translation, fidelity is to be directed toward neither the author nor the reader, but toward the writing project -- a project in which both writer and translator participate." Also, Barbara Godard, theorist and translator, is openly assertive about the manipulation this involved. She says "The feminist translator, affirming her critical difference, her delight in interminable rereading and re-writing, flaunts the signs of her manipulation of the text." The important role played by women translators up to the present is emphasized by Simon's reference to the feminist translators. **Language and identity** Other research in translation and gender has problematized the issue of language and identity. One example, in queer translation, is Keith Harvey's study 'Translating camp talk' (Harvey 1998/2012), which involved combining linguistic methods of analysis of literature with a cultural-theory angle, enabling study of the social and ideological environment that conditions the exchange. 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. Harvey examines the way 'gay men and lesbians work within appropriate prevailing straight (and homophobic) discourses', often appropriating language patterns from a range of communities. Thus, he describes the use of girl talk and Southern Belle accents. (Oh, my!, adorable, etc.), French expressions (ma bébé, comme ça) and a mix of formal and informal register by gay characters in Tony Kushner's Angels in America. Such characteristics are typical of camp talk in English. Harvey points out that French camp interestingly tends to use English words and phrases in a similar language 'game'. Importantly, Harvey links the linguistic characteristics of camp to cultural identity via queer theory. Camp then not only exposes the hostile values and thinking of 'straight' institutions, but also, by its performative aspect, makes the gay community visible and manifests its identity. Harvey brings together the various linguistic and cultural strands in his analysis of the translation of camp talk in extracts from two novels. 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. He discusses how 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' and shows a 'relative absence of radical gay (male) theorizing in contemporary France'. **ETI 319 Translation Theory** **The following summary is based on the book by J. Munday entitled *Introducing Translation Studies* (pp.223-232 & 250-255)** **The cultural and political agenda of translation** Venuti insists that the scope of translation studies needs to be broadened to take account of the value-driven nature of the sociocultural framework. Thus he contests Toury's 'scientific descriptive model with its aim of producing 'value-free' norms and laws of translation. Venuti says:.... Norms may be in the first instance linguistic or literary, but they will also include a diverse range of domestic values, beliefs, and social representations which carry ideological force in serving the interests of specific groups. And they are always housed in the social institutions where translations are produced and enlisted in cultural and political agendas. In addition to governments and other politically motivated institutions, which may decide to censor or promote certain works, the groups and social institutions to which Venuti refers would include the various players in the publishing industry as a whole. Above all, these would be the publishers and editors who choose the works and commission the translations, pay the translators and often dictate the translation method. They also include the literary agents, marketing and sales teams and reviewers. The reviewers' comments indicate and to some extent determine how translations are read and received in the target culture. Each of these players has a particular position and role within the dominant cultural and political agendas of their time and place. The translators themselves are part of that culture, which they can either accept or rebel against. **Venuti and the 'invisibility' of the translator** *The Translator's Invisibility* draws on Venuti's own experience as a translator of experimental Italian poetry and fiction. **Invisibility** is a term he uses 'to describe the translator's [situation and activity] in contemporary British and American cultures'. Venuti [sees this invisibility] as typically being produced: 1\. by the way translators themselves tend to translate 'fluently' into English, to produce an idiomatic and 'readable' TT, thus creating an 'illusion of transparency'; 2\. by the way the translated texts are typically read in the target culture: A translated text, whether prose or poetry, fiction or nonfiction, is judged acceptable by most publishers, reviewers and readers when it reads fluently, when the absence of any linguistic or stylistic peculiarities makes it seem transparent, giving the appearance that it reflects the foreign writer's personality or intention or the essential meaning of the foreign text -- the appearance, in other words, that the translation is not in fact a translation, but the 'original'. Venuti sees the most important factor for this as being 'the prevailing conception of authorship'. Translation is seen as derivative and of secondary quality and importance. Thus, English-language practice since Dryden has been to conceal the act of translation so that, even now, 'translations are rarely considered a form of literary scholarship'. **Domestication and foreignization** Venuti discusses invisibility hand in hand with two types of translation: domestication and foreignization. These practices concern both the choice of text to translate and the translation method. Their roots are traced back by Venuti to Schleiermacher and his 1813 essay 'Uber die verschiedenen Methoden des Ubersetzens', Venuti sees **domestication** as dominating British and American translation culture. Just as the postcolonialists are alert to the cultural effects of the differential in power relations between colony and ex-colony, so Venuti bemoans the phenomenon of domestication since it involves 'an ethnocentric reduction of the foreign text to receiving cultural values'. This entails translating in a transparent, fluent, 'invisible' style in order to minimize the foreignness of the TT. Venuti allies it with Schleiermacher's description of translation that 'leaves the reader in peace, as much as possible, and moves the author toward him'. Domestication further covers adherence to domestic literary canons by carefully selecting the texts that are likely to lend themselves to such a translation strategy. On the other hand, **foreignization** 'entails choosing a foreign text and developing a translation method along lines which are excluded by dominant cultural values in the target language'. It is the preferred choice of Schleiermacher, whose description is of a translation strategy where 'the translator leaves the writer in peace, as much as possible and moves the reader toward \[the writer\]'. Venuti follows this and considers foreignizing practices to be a 'highly desirable... strategic cultural intervention' which seek to 'send the reader abroad' by making the receiving culture aware of the linguistic and cultural difference inherent in the foreign text. This is to be achieved by a non-fluent, estranging or heterogeneous translation style designed to make visible the presence of the translator and to highlight the foreign identity of the ST. This is a way, Venuti says, to counter the unequal and 'violently' domesticating cultural values of the English-language world. In *The Scandals of Translation*, Venuti links foreignization to 'minoritizing' translation. One of the examples he gives of a minoritizing project is his own translation of works by the nineteenth-century Italian novelist Iginio Ugo Tarchetti (1839--1869). The very choice of works to translate is minoritizing: Tarchetti was a minor writer, a Milanese bohemian who confronted the literary establishment by using the standard Tuscan dialect to write experimental and Gothic novels that challenged the moral and political values of the day. As far as the language is concerned, the minoritizing or foreignizing practice of Venuti's translation comes through in the deliberate inclusion of foreignizing elements such as modern American slang. These aim to make the translator 'visible' and to make the readers realize they are reading a translation of a work from a foreign culture. The terms 'domestication' and 'foreignization' indicate fundamentally ethical attitudes towards a foreign text and culture, ethical effects produced by the choice of a text for translation and by the strategy devised to translate it, whereas the terms like 'fluency' and 'resistancy' indicate fundamentally discursive features of translation strategies in relation to the reader's cognitive processing. Venuti is also aware of some of its contradictions. It is a subjective and relative term that still involves a degree of domestication since it translates a ST for a receiving culture. Indeed, foreignization depends on the dominant values of the receiving culture because it becomes visible precisely when it departs from those values. However, Venuti stoutly defends foreignizing translations. They 'are equally partial \[as are domesticating translations\] in their interpretation of the foreign text, but they tend to flaunt their partiality instead of concealing it'. In addition, Venuti emphasizes the 'culturally variable and historically contingent' nature of the domestication and foreignization. Just as we saw with the discussion of descriptive studies, the values associated with these terms, reconstructed from close textual analysis or archival research, vary according to external sociocultural and historical factors. Venuti's general premises about foreignizing and domesticating translation practices, and about the invisibility of the translator and the relative power of the publisher and the translator, can be investigated in a variety of ways by: - comparing ST and TT linguistically for signs of foreignizing and domesticating practices; - interviewing the translators about their strategies and/or researching what the translators say they are doing, their correspondence with the authors and the different drafts of a translation if available; - interviewing the publishers, editors and agents to see what their aims are in publishing translations, how they choose which books to translate and what instructions they give to translators; - looking at how many books are translated and sold, which ones are chosen and into which languages, and how trends vary over time; - looking at the kind of translation contracts that are made and how 'visible' the translator is in the final product; - seeing how literally 'visible' the fact of translation is, looking at the packaging of the text, the appearance or otherwise of the translator's name on the title page, the copyright assignation, translators' prefaces, correspondence, etc.; - analysing the reviews of a translation, author or period. The aim would be to see what mentions are made of the translators (are they 'visible'?) and by what criteria reviewers (and the literary 'élite') judge translations at a given time and in a given culture. **ETI 319 Translation Theory** **The following summary is based on the book by J. Munday entitled *Introducing Translation Studies* (pp 200-213)** **Postcolonial translation theory** In *Translation and Gender*, Sherry Simon's focus centres on underlining the importance of the cultural turn in translation. In the conclusion, she insists on how 'contemporary feminist translation has made gender the site of a consciously transformative project, one which reframes conditions of textual authority' and summarizes the contribution of cultural studies to translation as follows: Cultural Studies brings to translation an understanding of the complexities of gender and culture. It allows us to situate linguistic transfer within the multiple 'post' realities of today: poststructuralism, postcolonialism and postmodernism. In subsequent years it is in fact postcolonialism that has attracted the attention of many translation studies researchers. Though its specific scope is sometimes undefined, postcolonialism 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. The consequent crossover between different contemporary disciplines can be seen by the fact that essays by Simon and by Lefevere appear in collections of postcolonial writings on translation, and Simon herself makes extensive reference to the postcolonialist Spivak. In particular, Simon highlights Spivak's concerns about the ideological consequences of the translation of 'Third World' literature into English and the distortion this entails. Spivak has addressed these questions in her seminal essay 'The politics of translation', which brings together feminist, postcolonialist and poststructuralist approaches. Tensions between the different approaches are highlighted, with Spivak speaking out against western feminists who expect feminist writing from outside Europe to be translated into the language of power, English. In Spivak's view, such translation is often expressed in 'translatese', which eliminates the identity of individuals and cultures that are politically less powerful and leads to a standardization of very different voices: In the act of wholesale translation into English there can be a betrayal of the democratic ideal into the law of the strongest. This happens when all the literature of the Third World gets translated into a sort of with-it translatese, so that the literature by a woman in Palestine begins to resemble, in the feel of its prose, something by a man in Taiwan. 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. Translations into these languages from Bengali too often fail to translate the difference of the Bengali view because the translator, although with good intentions, over-assimilates it to make it accessible to the western readers. Spivak's own translation strategy necessitates the translator's intimate understanding of the language and situation of the original. It draws on poststructuralist concepts of rhetoric, logic and the social. Spivak's work is indicative of how cultural studies, and especially postcolonialism, has focused on issues of translation, the transnational and colonization. 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 colonized peoples. The central intersection of translation studies and postcolonial theory is that of power relations. Tejaswini Niranjana, in her *Siting Translation: History, Poststructuralism, and the Colonial Context* sees literary translation as one of the discourses (the others being education, theology, historiography and philosophy) which 'inform the hegemonic apparatuses that belong to the ideological structure of colonial rule'. 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. These vary from missionaries who ran schools for the colonized and who also performed a role as linguists and translators, to ethnographers who recorded grammars of native languages. Niranjana sees all these groups as 'participating in the enormous project of collection and codification on which colonial power was based'. She specifically attacks translation's role within this power structure: "Translation as a practice shapes, and takes shape within, the asymmetrical relations of power that operate under colonialism." Furthermore, she goes on to criticize translation studies itself for its largely western orientation and for three main failings that she sees resulting from this: \(1) translation studies has until recently not considered the question of power imbalance between different languages; \(2) the concepts underlying much of western translation theory are flawed ('its notions of text, author, and meaning are based on an unproblematic, naively representational theory of language'); \(3) that the 'humanistic enterprise' of translation needs to be questioned, since translation in the colonial context builds a conceptual image of colonial domination into the discourse of western philosophy. **Exploration: In-betweenness and the 'third space'** For Homi Bhabha, the discourse of colonial power is sophisticated and often camouflaged. However, its authority may be subverted by the production of ambivalent cultural hybridity that allows space for the discourse of the colonized to interrelate with it and thus undermine it. The consequences for the translator are crucial. As Michaela Wolf (2000: 142) states, 'The translator is no longer a mediator between two different poles, but her/his activities are inscribed in cultural overlappings which imply difference.' Other work on colonial difference, by Sathya Rao (2006), challenges Bhabha's view that postcolonial translation is subversive. Rao proposes the term 'non-colonial translation theory', which 'considers the original as a radical immanence indifferent to the (colonial) world and therefore untranslatable into it'. This calls for a 'radically foreign performance' or non-translation. The contributions contained in Bassnett and Trivedi's book show that postcolonial translation studies take many forms. **ETI 319 Translation Theory** **The following summary is based on the book by J. Munday entitled *Introducing Translation Studies* (pp.223-232 & 250-255)** **Steiner's Hermeneutic Motion** Although hermeneutics, as a theory of the interpretation of meaning, dates back at least to ancient Greece, the modern hermeneutic movement owes its origins to the eighteenth and nineteenth century German Romantics. It is George Steiner's hugely influential *After Babel* which was the key modern reference for the hermeneutics of translation. Steiner defines the hermeneutic approach as 'the investigation of what it means to "understand" a piece of oral or written speech, and the attempt to diagnose this process in terms of a general model of meaning'. Originally published in 1975, *After Babel* claims to be 'the first systematic investigation of the theory and processes of translation since the eighteenth century'. Steiner's initial focus is on the psychological and intellectual functioning of the mind of the translator, and he goes on to discuss the process of meaning and understanding underlying the translation process. When he returns to considering the 'theory' of translation, it is to posit his own hermeneutically oriented and 'totalizing' model. This model, following Roman Jakobson, conceives of translation in a wide compass in which it shares features with acts of communication that are not limited to the interlingual: A 'theory' of translation, a 'theory' of semantic transfer, must mean one of two things. It is either an intentionally sharpened, hermeneutically oriented way of designating a working mode of all meaningful exchanges, of the totality of semantic communication. Or it is a subsection of such a model with specific reference to interlingual exchanges, to the emission and reception of significant messages between different languages... The 'totalizing' designation is the more instructive because it argues the fact that all procedures of expressive articulation and interpretative reception are translational, whether intra- or interlingually. Steiner's description of the hermeneutics of translation, 'the act of elicitation and appropriative transfer of meaning' (ibid.: 312), is based on a conception of translation not as a science but as 'an exact art', with precisions that are 'intense but unsystematic'. The hermeneutic motion which forms the core of Steiner's description consists of four moves, as in The main points of each move are as follows: \(1) Initiative trust: The translator's first move is 'an investment of belief', a belief and trust that there is something there in the ST that can be understood. Steiner sees this as a concentration of the human way of viewing the world symbolically. In the case of translation, the translator considers the ST to stand for something in the world, a coherent 'something' that can be translated even if the meaning might not be apparent immediately. This position entails two risks described by Steiner: a\) The 'something' may turn out to be 'everything'. This was the case of medieval translators and exegetists of the Bible (and, one might add, for translators of sacred works from other traditions) who were overwhelmed by the all-embracing divine message. b\) It may be 'nothing'. This may be either because they are deliberately noncommunicative (e.g. nonsense rhymes) or because meaning and form are inextricably interwoven and cannot be separated and translated. \(2) Aggression: This is an 'incursive... extractive... invasive' move. Steiner looks to Heidegger for a basis of this view of comprehension as 'appropriative' and 'violent'. Noting St Jerome's use of the metaphor of meaning made captive by the translator, Steiner graphically depicts the translator's seizure of the ST: 'The translator invades, extracts, and brings home. The simile is that of the open-cast mine left an empty scar in the landscape'. Steiner considers that some texts and genres 'have been exhausted by translation' and that others have been translated so well they are now only read in translation -- for the latter, Steiner gives the example of Rilke (1875--1926)'s German translations of the sonnets of French Renaissance poet Louise Labé (c.1520--1566). At times, Steiner describes the aggression involved as 'penetration'). As we shall discuss in section 10.1.1, this metaphor has been strongly criticized by feminists for its violent male-centric sexual imagery. \(3) Incorporation (ibid.: 314--16): The third movement in Steiner's hermeneutics refers to how the ST meaning, extracted by the translator in the second movement, is brought into the TL which is already full of its own words and meanings. Different types of assimilation can occur: Steiner considers the two poles to be 'complete domestication', where the TT takes its full place in the TL canon, such as Luther's German Bible. The crucial point Steiner makes is that the importing of the meaning of the foreign text 'can potentially dislocate or relocate the whole of the native structure'. With further metaphors, he suggests the two ways in which this process functions: a\) as 'sacramental intake': the target culture ingests and becomes enriched by the foreign text; b\) as 'infection': the target culture is infected by the source text and ultimately rejects it. Steiner gives the example of French seventeenth century neoclassical literary models (e.g. the plays of Corneille, Racine and Molière) which complied with the strict technical artistic principles of ancient Greece and Rome. Initially, these were poorly imitated in Russian and German, among others, but were ultimately rejected by the more fluid ideas of European Romanticism. The struggle for supremacy between literary systems is similar to the concepts described by the polysystem theorists such as Even-Zohar. According to Steiner; this struggle, 'the dialectic of embodiment', also takes place within the individual translator: The dialectic of embodiment entails the possibility that we may be consumed. This dialectic can be seen at the level of individual sensibility. Acts of translation add to our means; we come to incarnate alternative energies and resources of feeling. But we may be mastered and made lame by what we have imported. Thus, just as a culture can be unbalanced by the importation of certain translated texts, so too can a translator's energies be enhanced or, on the other hand, consumed by translation that saps the creative powers necessary for the production of his or her own works. Steiner sees such imbalance as stemming from a 'dangerously incomplete' hermeneutic motion. Balance can only be restored by the act of compensation, the fourth movement. \(4) Compensation or the 'enactment of reciprocity' is 'the crux of the métier and morals of translation'. Steiner describes the aggressive appropriation and incorporation of the meaning of the ST which 'leaves the original with a dialectically enigmatic residue'. In other words, although there has been a loss for the ST the 'residue' is positive. Steiner considers the ST to be 'enhanced' by the act of translation. Enhancement occurs immediately a ST is deemed worthy of translation, and the subsequent transfer to another culture broadens and enlarges the original. The ST enters into a range of diverse relationships with its resultant TT or TTs, metaphorized as the 'echo' and the 'mirror'. all of which enrich the ST. For example, even if a TT is 'only partly adequate' ('adequate' here is used in a non-technical sense), the ST is still enhanced since its own 'resistant vitalities' and 'opaque centres of specific genius' are highlighted in contrast to the TT. Imbalance is caused by the energy which flows out of the ST and into the TT, 'altering both and altering the harmonics of the whole system'. Such imbalance needs to be compensated. At those points where the TT is lesser than the original, the TT makes the original's virtues 'more precisely visible'; where the TT is greater than the original, it nevertheless identifies points in the ST that have the potential for enhancement and for the realization of its 'elemental reserves'. In this way, balance and equity are restored. Steiner sees this requirement of equity between the texts as providing real and 'ethical' meaning to the concept of faithfulness. Steiner was confident that the fluid, moral, balanced 'hermeneutic of trust' would allow translation theory to escape the 'sterile triadic model' which had marked theory up to and into the twentieth century.