Translation as intercultural mediation
New emphasis within translation theory on cultural rather than linguistic transfer
becomes most visible in the 1980s, particularly among functional translation
scholars writing in German.
Within this new emphasis, translation is conceived as an act of communication
rather than transcoding, focused on messages rather than words, thus shifting
attention from formal aspects to functional and sociocultural ones, with the text
considered as an integral part of the world rather than an isolated phenomenon
(Snell-Hornby 1988: 43).
The dominant metaphor used is that of sending a message
The translator is seen as a mediator between the original writer and the target
reader, owing loyalty to both.
Translation Studies deals not only with the process and product of translation as a
linguistic phenomenon, but also with translation as a form of intercultural mediation
taking place in a specific social and cultural context. And translators are
increasingly portrayed as cultural mediators who possess a high degree of
intercultural competence, as well as relevant subject-area expertise and other nonlinguistic skills (cf. Schmitt 1998; Wilss 1999; Katan 2004).
Translation theory thus begins to take more account of many non-linguistic factors
involved in the sociological process of translation.
Integrative model of TS or TS as an interdiscipline (Snell-Hornby).
Translation discussed as social action (Vermeer, Holz-Mänttäri), as an intercultural
chain of communication running from the commissioner of the translation to its
receivers
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The translator is an expert in cultural mediation with authority to carry
responsibility for the text and the skills required go beyond the purely linguistic to
embrace questions of cultural adaptation and text design. The translator thus needs
to be "bi-cultural" (Vermeer 1978) or is a "cross-cultural specialist" (Snell-Hornby
1992).
A text's translatability varies "with the degree to which it is embedded in its own
specific culture" (Snell-Hornby 1988: 41) and according to the distance between the
two cultures.
Cultures have a tendency to perceive in a particular way, a 'metaprogramme'
involving cultural or value orientations relating to concepts such as time and space,
power and individualism (see Katan 1999: 172ff).
We view other cultures through the filter of our own, which means that we can
easily misinterpret – and thus mistranslate – texts produced by other cultures.
Moreover, we interpret texts on the basis of our past experience of similar genres in
our own language
The translator needs to decide how much information should be given about the
context of culture for communication to occur.
Gentzler (2001) observes that a text is always a part of history; translation "is
enmeshed in the entire network of multiple languages, discourses, sign systems, and
cultures, all of which are found in both the source and translated texts and which
mutually interact in the process of translation. The number of borders being crossed
in one translation are always multiple"
In cross-cultural communication, it is often assumed that the surface language refers
the reader to the same shared semantic base. However, languages categorise reality
in different ways, neatly overlapping in some areas, but not in others and, like all
models, languages generalise, distort and make assumptions.
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The translator/mediator can reduce distortion by looking for implicit information in
both the immediate and wider context and making it explicit.
All translation involves some degree of manipulation or shifts – needed to facilitate
communication between writer and reader.
The translator engages in dialogue with both the text producer and the receiver,
"brokering a deal between the two parties" to communicate across linguistic and
cultural boundaries (op.cit.: 14).
Look at the communication strategies underlying the production and reception of
texts. There are striking similarities among texts from different fields and that
content-related distinctions and generalisations – such as that technical translators
are more concerned with content, literary translators with form – are misleading.
This is because there are similar linguistic processes at work in both literary and
non-literary texts.
The coherence, or underlying continuity of sense, of any stretch of language can
only be established by relating the sequence to its wider context, both linguistic and
extra-linguistic.
Radegundis Stolze (1999, 2001) describes a hermeneutic approach to text
understanding, which places emphasis on the knowledge structures involved in the
interpretation of texts.
Translating as formulating a message "understood on the basis of the original text"
(Stolze 2001: 301)
We can discard the notion of source and target texts, as both are "the same, a form
of expression of the message's mental representation in the translator's mind"
Understanding a text is a "cognitive phenomenon as one's knowledge base is
activated hermeneutically by the text input", i.e. what you understand depends on
what you already know (ibid.).
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The translator's job consists in producing a text appropriate to the socioculture or
discourse community in a linguistic form they expect and are familiar with"
(Stolze's 201: 302)
No translator works in a socio-cultural vacuum. Even outside a clear institutional
setting, translators are under the influence of their previous education, training and
experience, as well as broader ideas about what is good or bad translation, how we
should translate, where the translator's loyalty should lie and so on (all such ideas
differ over time and from one society or context to another). This is where
Bourdieu's concept of habitus, referring to professional dispositions and attitudes
within a given field or practice, comes in useful.
Simeoni (1998: 32) borrows the term to refer to the translatorial mind or mindset,
which is "the elaborate result of a personalized social and cultural history". The
translator's habitus mediates between the personal and the social; it also interacts
with practice. It is complementary to the concept of norms, which "without a
habitus to instantiate them make no more sense than a habitus without norms"
(Simeoni op.cit. 33).
"Inevitably we feed our own beliefs, knowledge, attitudes and so on into our own
processing of texts, so that any translation will, to some extent, reflect the
translator's own mental and cultural outlook, despite the best of impartial
intentions." (Hatim and Mason 1990: 11)
Cultural mediators need to be extremely aware of their own cultural identity and
understand how their own culture influences perceptions.
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Translation and the target reader
A functional approach related to both Skopostheorie and Toury's descriptivism
emphasises the target end rather than the ST and its author.
Involves identifying the function of the TT and comparison with texts from the
same genre within the target culture, rather than focusing on equivalence relations
between ST and TT.
Evaluation of the specific translation's acceptability within a specific socio-cultural
context at a particular point in history and discussion of how the TT is processed by
the reader
Texts are not passively received: the reader – and thus the translator, too – is
actively and creatively engaged in a hermeneutic process drawing upon not only
language and culture, but also experience and perception
The meaning or function of a text is not inherent in the linguistic signs of which it is
composed, but rather a text is "made meaningful by its receiver and for its receiver"
(Nord 1997: 31).
Hatim and Mason (1990: 64-65):
"seeing the meaning of texts as something that is negotiated between
producer and receiver and not as a static entity, independent of human
processing activity once it has been encoded, is, we believe, the key to an
understanding of translating, teaching translating and judging translations."
We have to look not simply at the completed translation but at the whole process by
which the translation was produced, the reader's interaction with it and the context
within which that interaction takes place.
Crucial to understanding the process of translation is an insight into the norms and
strategies that have guided the work of the translator (DTS).
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New awareness that world knowledge, acquired through experience and
socialisation and thus culture-specific, reflecting the translator's interactions with
the social environment, forms part of the cognitive process.
Any translation is embedded in a social context and translators are part of a social
system, working for or within institutions, which determine what is translated and,
often, how it is translated: as Hermans (1997: 10) puts it, translating is a "socially
regulated activity".
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