Preface
Translation Studies? What Do You Mean?
Jeroen Vandaele
What makes translation special among other interpretive “acts of meaning”
— to use Jerome Bruner’s expression (1990) — is its relative degree of
explicitness. In translation, a written or spoken end-product bears testimony to
the interpretation that has taken place. As such, a translation differs in at least
one way from the inner thoughts when, for example, reading a book before
going to sleep: while from a personal point of view the book on my night-table
may turn out to have drastically changed some of my deepest beliefs overnight,
for a researcher in cultural studies a translation has the tempting advantage of
constituting a materialized trace of interpretation.1 As scary as this thought may
be for translators, cultural studies (defined as any scholarly area that wants to
study cultural goods) would be quite unwise to turn down such a gift from the
gods. The often-heard question about the justification of translation studies is
thus out of order. For anyone who believes the study of cultures to be useful,
translation is not merely a justified object but a forceful, compelling area of
research, an exceptional and privileged phenomenon. It is cultural studies’ duty
to focus on translations as rather explicit signs of cultural differences — where
“culture” is of course to be understood as belonging to any possible group
sharing beliefs and values.
Hence, no theme, no manifestation of cultural translation may a priori
be excluded from research, however “trivial”, “vile”, “marginal”, “boring” or
“commercial” it may be taken to be by certain scholarly and intellectual
traditions. Like previous CETRA volumes, this book includes essays on topics
as varied as journalism (Erkka Vuorinen and Sung Hee Kirk), documentaries
(Eliana Franco), film (Alexandra Assis Rosa, Ilse Coppieters and Jeroen
Vandaele), sociolects, dialects and “new languages” (Mette Rudvin, Alexandra
Assis Rosa, Carmen Millán Varela, Lukasz Bogucki and Ieva Zauberga),
children’s literature (Mieke Desmet), emigrants’ literature (Nike Kocijančič)
and administrative and technical language (Carmen Millán Varela). But this
does not imply that more prestigious labels lose relevance — it is only that they
are often addressed through the more “downmarket” objects of study. Indeed,
the present collection also deals with politics and ideology (Mette Rudvin, Luis
1
When I say translation is an explicit trace, I refer to the researcher’s perspective. It is
well known that, from a culture’s or user’s point of view, translation may try to
function as a more/less hidden practice (see Robyns 1994b).
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Translation Studies Located
Pegenaute, Kate Sturge, Ieva Zauberga, Nike Kocijančič, Eliana Franco,
Carmen Millán Varela); literature, canonization and normalization (Siobhan
Brownlie, Mette Rudvin, Laurence Malingret, Martina Ožbot); and cognition,
linguistics and pragmatics (Ernst-Norbert Kurth, Patrick Zabalbeascoa, Jürgen
Gercken, Jeroen Vandaele, Francisco Javier Díaz, Sonia Colina). I see my
classifications as being merely illustrative: many names could fall under many
more labels.
While justification is not an issue, credibility clearly is. Where does
translation studies find the authority to rethink translation as an act creating
cultural identity instead of seeing it, with the translator, as a purely pragmatic
problem-solution activity? How can it lay claim to a view that is so ambitious
and quasi-objectifying that it is spontaneously challenged by many translators?
No single solution can be expected here, since the question actually concerns
nothing less than the legitimization of academic research on translation. The
answers to be found in the papers of this volume refer to different conceptions
of scholarly behaviour, among which Gideon Toury’s seminal thoughts seem
even more incontournables since the publication of his Descriptive Translation
Studies and Beyond (1995). In the papers in this volume, his “functional” and
“descriptive” view of the phenomenon (where, how and why do certain texts
function as translations?) is often backed up by particular — selective —
readings of Hermans, Lambert, Delabastita, Lefevere, Holmes, Bassnett. Yet I
find it more stimulating to point out where distance has been taken from this
implicit canon, this new common sense of the descriptive paradigm.2
A first substantial deviation concerns the apparent need to evaluate in
some way, in the face of the attempts by descriptive approaches to sideline the
issue. Quite often, members of the very same descriptivist canon are — less
selectively — quoted in their more “appreciative” moments as a way of
overcoming the dangers of sterile positivism (e.g. Pegenaute’s use of
Lefevere’s “patronage” notion or Rudvin’s references to Hermans’ conception
of norms as “problem solvers”). Some contributions are more implicitly
evaluative: the mere fact of pointing out certain phenomena rather than others
hints at an appreciative move in Varela’s, Desmet’s and Malingret’s papers.
Still other contributors look for more explicitly value-oriented interpretations
instead of apparently innocent, detached accounts: Robyns, von Flotow,
Venuti, to name but a few politicized analysts, are referred to by Sturge,
Kocijančič and Zauberga, although in very different ways.
A second group of deviations seems to hint at places where the
descriptivist canon is perceived as falling short. For instance, when Vuorinen,
Zabalbeascoa and Franco give centre stage to translation’s concrete social
2
Those doubting the existence of such a paradigm are referred to Hermans (1999),
who conceives the descriptivists’ institutional setting in terms of Diana Crane’s
“invisible college”.
2
Preface
embedding (actors, institutions, events, material conditions), they do so by
referring to other language-oriented paradigms: Fairclough, Hatim and Mason,
Holz-Mänttäri, Snell-Hornby, etc. Similarly, some papers have considered it
necessary to draw on insights from other fields of research: Brownlie
(sociology), Rudvin (folklore studies), Kurth (metaphor theory), Vandaele
(humour studies), Coppieters (film studies). Further, Colina shows how a
careful experiment can engage as many parameters as one can handle and thus
seems to teach a lesson in explanatory modesty.
A final group of dissident voices quite simply refuse to take up parts or
the totality of the canon. They do not seem to acknowledge the credibility of a
detached research programme, limiting themselves instead to increasing the
scope of what is seen to happen at the translator’s pragmatic level. Gercken
largely silences the canon by using other references such as Koller and
Gerzymisch-Arbogast; Ožbot refuses to step outside normativity for reasons
she explains; Bogucki’s paper ironizes the rhetorics of description;
Zabalbeascoa works on a terminological middle way that would move from
detached perception to attached preception. Finally, Brownlie seems to suggest
the relative pointlessness of terminological digressions on norms in translation
studies — terminology should “emerge” from the specific corpus under study
— and her paper could thus be read as a critical comment on both
Zabalbeascoa’s and the canon’s technical projects. It seems, then, that the “next
generation” (Robyns 1994a) is once again not too bothered to take a clear
(“pure”) stance in old and purist battles. But would this mean that the articles
collected in this volume find no positively definable common ground? Let us
give it a try.
Generally speaking, and irrespective of the paradigms and perspectives
mentioned, the essays in this volume testify to the fact that translation is seen
as a “relocation of meaning” in the sense that a “relocation” automatically
implies a change at the core of meaning itself — since cultural studies does not
usually want to contemplate anything as abstract and impoverished as
decontextualized meaning. All meaning is specific and located; it occurs in one
subject through one text (in its largest sense), in one moment in time and in one
specific code. Changing one of these elements (subject, text, moment, place or
code) means changing the meaning altogether. When we know that translation
changes all of those elements, we may feel compelled to see it as creating
difference rather than identity. Whether they aim simply to observe this
alteration or assess it in evaluative terms, all papers accept the relevance of
relocated meaning for cultural dynamics. Colina shows how deficient
translation between languages (Spanish and English) may involve interference
at the most basic syntactic level, and she indicates which forces stand firm
against this temptation; Ožbot displays the consequences of deficiently
translated literary history (from Italian into Slovene); Kirk tells the story of
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Translation Studies Located
langue-as-culture in translational operations between very different societies
(the United States and Korea); in Coppieters we see how the needs of
commercial film impose themselves on screenplay and novel (all in English);
Díaz informs us about successful pun translation in two competing cultures
(Galician and Spanish), for one of which Varela sketches the general role of
translation in the nation-building process (Galicia); Assis Rosa’s account of
dialect/sociolect translation demonstrates the point of located meaning to the
full (what is to Portuguese what Cockney and Received Pronunciation are to
English?); Franco invests meaning in both cultural and institutional locations
(Europe and the Church), whether these semantic effects were intended or not;
Vandaele’s essay attempts to indicate how heterogeneous a phenomenon
humour is, also when translated from English into French and Spanish;
Gercken discovers the existence of pseudo-transparent cultural items:
Norwegians and Germans may understand “the same” literary signifiers in
different ways; Desmet holds that children’s literature might be treated
differently in different places (Britain, the Netherlands, France); Kocijančič is
disturbed by modalities of relocalization found in an American version of a
Slovene classic; and neither does Zauberga hide her concern about translations
from English that desacralize the Latvian tongue by reactivating taboo
expressions; in his essayistic contribution, Bogucki relocates all sorts of local
speech to show the humorous new effects this creates; for the translator’s sake,
Zabalbeascoa would like to see the possible factors of relocation inventorized
and has already engaged in this mind-wrecking activity; Malingret tries to
make sense of what exactly is relocalized from the “Hispanic” literatures into
the Francophone ones; Sturge and Pegenaute rather reflect on what according
to certain sources was not to be imported under Hitler and Franco respectively;
Kurth’s piece on metaphor clearly shows on how many levels a German
metaphor translation is not the exact equivalent of its English original; in his
project proposal, Vuorinen warns against taking international news at face
value since local stories, after being centralized by agencies, may be
relocalized in very different ways; from Rudvin we learn that the relocation of
folk literature in a new sociolect and genre may have huge political
implications; and finally, Brownlie predicts that terminology will gain meaning
only when it is located. Would this focus on the location of meaning be a way
of thematizing how CETRA conceives translation? Or would this merely be my
personal inference?
Now, how about the (re)location of CETRA itself? First of all, if
CETRA is locatable at all, it would be found in a collection of people rather
than in one institution or geographical position. Further, if this group of people
can be said to stand for some sort of CETRA language, it is hopefully a pidgin
arising from various languages (still largely to be traced) and out of which new
languages could be born when intersecting with new situations. The fourth
4
Preface
volume (1997-1999) might tell us if the move of our summer seminar to
Misano (Italy) has meant anything in this respect. And who knows what will
happen if the pidgin moves from Leuven to other universities? In any case, as
long as the different speakers move with it, books like this one will continue to
be brought out. For now, I would like to thank the following people for
speaking whatever language after refereeing whichever paper in this volume:
José Lambert, Theo Hermans, Lieven D’hulst, Dirk Delabastita, Yves Gambier,
Daniel Gile, Gideon Toury, Anthony Pym, Lawrence Venuti, Dirk De Geest,
Stef Slembrouck, Hugo Marquant, Joris De Rooy and Clem Robyns. Others
offered feedback on more detailed issues which it would take too long to
specify here: Joy Sisley, Abdulla Al-Harrasi, Koenraad Du Pont, Roger
Janssens, Kate Sturge, Katrijn Hillewaere, Nathalie Masy and Peter Jansen. I
further thank José Lambert for being as unprejudiced as one can dream a
supervisor to be and Clem Robyns for telling me how to behave under such
unprejudiced supervision.
Finally, my greatest thanks go to Kate Sturge, for her sense of perfection
during the final stylistic corrections.
References
Bruner, Jerome
1990
Acts of Meaning, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Hermans, Theo
1999
Translation in Systems. Descriptive and System-Oriented
Approaches Explained, Manchester: St Jerome.
Robyns, Clem
1994a
Preface to Translation and the (Re)production of Culture, edited
by Clem Robyns, Leuven: the CERA Chair for Translation,
Communication and Cultures, pp.1-5.
1994b
“Translation and Discursive Identity”, Poetics Today 15:1,
pp.405-427.
Toury, Gideon
1995
Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond, Amsterdam /
Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
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