Descriptive Research:
What, How, When, For whom?
« Sire, y a-t-il des Belges? »
A century of intra- and international
literary relations in Belgium
(1850-1950).
Lieven D’hulst & Reine Meylaerts – CETRA – 21/08/2008
Preliminaries


Underlying theses: make them explicit!
“Identity”:
o
o
o
constructed
dialogical
differential
 Cf. Even-Zohar, I. 1990. Polysystem
Studies. Special Issue of Poetics Today.
11.1. Durham: Duke University Press.
Preliminaries

Literary identity: constructed in
interaction (confrontation, opposition)
with other literatures via:
o
o
o
o
import of literary translations,
critical discourse on other literatures,
personal relationships between writers, critics,
…,
… etc.
 Literary identity construction is dynamic
 Literary relations are power relations
Aim and Relevance?
Role of literary relations in literary
identity construction
 General relevance
 Specific relevance: why Belgium?

Sire, y a-t-il des Belges?
Sire, y a-t-il des Belges?
Sire, y a-t-il des Belges?



1830
Historical accident
Identity problem: multilingual,
multicultural:
o
o
o
Dutch ~ Holland
French ~ France
German ~ Germany
 ‘carrefour de l’Europe’: a transit zone
State of the Art?

Previous research?
Relationship?
Strenghts? Weaknesses? Blind spots?

Belgium:


o
o
o
Lack of research
Unilateral ‘national’ scope
Monolingual scope
Prospective Output?

General:
o
o
o
o
o
broadening of the study of so-called
‘monolingual’, often ‘national’ literary
identities
contribute to intercultural, multilingual literary
historiography
insight in literary hierarchies – dominant
partners and models
insight in relations between literature and
other societal fields (politics, economics)
…
Prospective Output?

Specific:
“provide insight in the fundamental and intricate
role of intercultural contacts in the dialectics of
the construction of a ‘Belgian’ – or alternative –
literary identity and more specifically in the way
the (problematic) self-definition of this ‘Belgian’
literature took shape and evolved through
complex literary relations with other, allophone
(Flemish, Dutch, German, English, American…)
and homophone (French) literatures and
cultures”
Prospective Output?

Theoretical-Methodological?
o
o
o
Integration of text- and discourseoriented DTS with actor- and
institution-oriented sociological models
elaborate on (the relations between)
key concepts in DTS, leading to new
insights of relevance for translation
theory
…
Periodization?




Time span? Starting and end date?
Diachrony or synchrony or both?
Arbitrariness!
1850:
o
o
end of pirate editions from France
start of development of autonomous Belgian
literary system among other procedures
through translated import
 1950:
o
end of French as unifying dominant language
and culture
Corpus?

Translations? Translations and Metatexts?
Published volumes? Translations in
Periodicals?
…

Francophone Periodicals:


o
o
Translations and metatexts
privileged view of the literary system
Methodology?
~ aim & focus: dynamic process!
 Don’t be slave of ‘a’ model!
 Don’t be afraid of being eclectic!

Text-oriented
 Discourse-oriented
 Actor-oriented

I. Text-oriented:
Translation analysis (1)
I.a. Quantitative research:
 Mapping of import
 Heilbron, Johan. 1999. “Towards a Sociology of
Translation. Book Translations as a Cultural
World-System”. European Journal of Social
Theory 2(4): 429-444.
 Key sectors of translated literature:
o periods
o literary subsystems
o source literatures
o genres
o authors
o …
I. Text-oriented:
Translation analysis (2)
 Francophone Belgian periodicals 18501950: representative of:
o
o
o
o
Period: continuity and distribution
Literary subsystems
Societal evolutions
Ideological oppositions
I. Text-oriented:
Translation analysis (3)
I.b. Descriptive translation research
 DTS: Toury 1995 …
 Translation Strategies: Norms!
o
Macro-structural aspects (titles, chapters,
paragraphs…)
narratologic elements (narrator, space, point of view,
character etc.)
micro-structural aspects: lexico-semantic elements,
local colour, language registers, references to the
(problematic) socio-cultural relations between
languages and cultures, syntactic interventions,
mechanisms of censorship…
o
…
o
o
Text-oriented:
Translation analysis (4)

Translation strategies (ctd.)
o
the language of translation:
 specific literary and socio-political
connotations
 symbolic hierarchies between the various
languages, literatures and cultures
 accentuate the ideological, socio-cultural
fault lines of society
 form a statement on cultural identity
Text-oriented:
Translation analysis (5)



Son chien s’appelait Duc, son hibou Koeb,
sa chatte Mie, son serin Fientje. (Buysse
1925:60)
“Ah, ça oui, m’sieur” répondit Poover (...).
(Buysse 1925:62)
Kiki, piaule-t-il la nuit, papa ne dit plus,
comme dans le temps - “Ah m..., laisse le
donc gueuler, l’animal, il finira bien par se
taire!” (Claes 1929:528)
II. Discourse-oriented:
discursive practices (1)



Translated texts acquire meaning within
the discursive contexts into which they
are integrated, read and propagated (or
censored)
Angenot, M. 1989. 1889. Un état du
discours social. Québec: Le Préambule.
study the “dicible” with reference to
‘other’ literatures and cultures
II. Discourse-oriented:
discursive practices (2)

analysis of critical discourse on
literary relations and on foreign
literatures and cultures
o
o
o
what can/cannot/must be written about
‘other’ literatures and cultures
positive/negative dichotomies
tropes and argumentation structures
representative of the image of the
Other
II. Discourse-oriented:
discursive practices (3)
From the beginning of the XIth Century, French introduced
itself in Flanders with the new ideas and the whole
medieval European civilization, without violence, by the
natural course of things. That French has dominated
Flemish, is what our common sense tells us and what
history teaches us. (…) between knowing Flemish and
receiving one’s entire education in this language, an abyss
exists. To prevent young Flemish to receive their education
in French, is to take away from them the most beautiful
intellectual patrimony that one can possess. Indeed,
French language is a world language, the vehicle of a
powerful civilization, an instrument of first order to
distribute ideas, to enlarge the mental circle where
Flemish people move. (Gandavus 1918: 4-5)
III. Actor-oriented:
sociological research (1)




new challenge for DTS: up-to-now
neglected question about the positions
and roles of ‘actors’
usefulness of a dynamic and plural
subject-grounded category
many attempts to integrate the notion of
‘habitus’ (Bourdieu 1972) into a
descriptive approach to translation
Simeoni, D. 1998. “The Pivotal Status of
the Translator’s Habitus”. Target. 10:1. 139.
III. Actor-oriented:
sociological research (2)

Habitus:
o
o
o
the subjects’ internalised system of social
structures in the form of dispositions
dispositions engender practices, perceptions
and attitudes which are regular but not
necessarily fixed or invariant
under the influence of his/her social position
and his/her individual and collective past,
every cultural actor thus develops (and
continues to develop) a social identity: a
certain representation of the world and of
his/her position therein.
III. Actor-oriented:
sociological research (3)

Habitus:
“[o]bviously, this concept
corresponds to and reinforces the
notion of norms of translation”.
(Sela-Sheffy, Rakefet. 2005. “How to be a (recognized)
translator: Rethinking habitus, norms, and the field of
translation”. Target 17 (1): 1-26. 2.)
III. Actor-oriented:
sociological research (4)



Literary translators: interiorise and
transform to a certain extent literary and
socio-cultural, socio-political … norms
Role of translator(s) in dynamics of
norms?
How do translators perceive their role as
intercultural mediators? How are they
perceived in this role?
III. Actor-oriented:
sociological research (5)

Belgium:
o
o
o
o
Strained intercultural relations (D-F)
Translators have to hover between strongly
concurrential, oppositional attitudes and
discursive practices concerning language,
translation, identity – in one multilingual
space!
Who is/has the right to be a translator?
How do one’s stylistic translational choices
relate to a certain (intercultural) habitus?
III. Actor-oriented:
sociological research (6)

“In French but to serve Flanders!”