CULTURAL AND IDEOLOGICAL
TURNS
Focus on the interactions
between translation and culture
> from translation as text to
translation as culture and politics
3 areas

Translation as rewriting

Translation and gender

Translation and postcolonialism
André Lefevere
Focuses on concrete factors:

Issues of power, ideology, institution and
manipulation
> people involved in these processes are
REWRITING literature and governing its
consumption
(at work in translation, historiography,
anthologization, editing, etc.)
Motivations for rewriting:


Ideological (conforming to or rebelling against
the dominant ideology)
Poetological (conforming to or rebelling against
the dominant/preferred poetics)
ex: E. Fitzgerald translator of Omar Khayyam
Translation controlled by 3 main
factors
1) Professionals within the literary system : critics,
reviewers, teachers, translators
2) Patronage outside the literary system :
institutions, academies, patrons, the media, etc.
3) Dominant poetics : literary devices + the
concept of the role of literature
2) Patronage outside the literary system :
3 elements



The ideological component: constraints
regarding subject and form
The economic component: royalty payments
and translation fees
The status component: benefits in terms of
social status not economic gain
PATRONAGE: undifferentiated / differentiated
3) Dominant poetics
a) literary devices: genres, symbols, characters,
etc.
b) the concept of the role of literature: relation of
literature to the social system in which it exists
(role of institutions in determining the poetics)
On the interaction between poetics,
ideology and translation
“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.”
(Lefevere, 1992a)
> the translator's ideology or the ideology
imposed upon the translator by patronage
> the dominant poetics in the TL culture
Ideology + poetics dictate the
translation strategy
Ex.: translating Aristophanes' Lysistrata: “if he
doesn't give you his hand, take him by the
penis”
Ex.: translating the diary of Anne Frank
There is no greater enmity in the world than
between Germans and Jews
There is no greater enmity in the world than
between these Germans and Jews
Translation and Gender
Sherry Simon: “culture” is not unproblematic!
> Simon focuses on sexism in translation studies
> Simon approaches translation from a genderstudies angle
> Simon develop the concept of TRANSLATION
PROJECT: fidelity toward the writing process
(not to the author, nor the reader)
> political project: make the feminine visible in
language
Ex.:




Linguistic markers: bold e in one
Capitalizations: M in huMan rights
Neologisms: auther
Female personifications: dawn – she
Men and women language:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGoC8FTLKS
I
Men talk:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXD8yOxIPB
0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dn8B0VLaqH
In addition to this:

Essential contribution to literary history: women
translators
Translation and gay texts

More on the issue of gender and identity
Ex: translating camp talk
combining linguistic methods + analysis of
literature + contact theory + politeness in
language practice
- use of girl talk
- Southern Belle accent
- French expressions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMQ7vtm7_Nw&feature=relmf
u
What happens in translation?


Markers of gay identity disappear (to be gay =
en etre)
Or are made pejorative (perfect weakness =
faible)
WHY?
A way of speaking is a way to...

Expose hostile values

Make the community visible
In France: 1) (perhaps) the usefulness of identity
markers are not recognized
2) a radical gay (male) theorizing is absent
In USA: 1) publishers support gay writing
2) gay subculture is much stronger and accepted
Translation and the postcolonial
“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”
> what is postcolonialism?
Postcolonial
= has to do with the history of the former
colonies, powerful European empires,
resistance to colonial powers, the imbalance of
power relations bt colonizers and colonized
Gayatri Spivak
brings together feminist, poststructuralist,
postcolonial approaches
against translationese
which erases difference and eliminates the
identity of those who are less powerful
Spivak
First world women should learn the minorities
language : ex., Bengali
Translation has played an active role in
colonization
Tejaswini Niranjana
Translation: instrument to rewrite an image of the
East that has come to stand for the truth
(missionaries, ethnographers, officials, etc.)
western orientation has 3 failings:



Translation studies does not consider power
imbalance
Some concepts of unity and the subject are
flawed
Humanistic enterprise needs to be questioned
The postcolonial translator must...


Call into question every aspect of colonialism,
dismantling the hegemonic West from within
Resist colonial discourse and use and
interventionist approach
Translation...

Battleground of the colonial project :
translational → transnational
“in our age of /the valorization of) migrancy, exile,
diaspora, the word 'translation' seems to have
come full circle and reverted from its figurative
literary meaning of an interlingual transaction to
its etymological physical meaning of locational
disrupture; translation seems to have been
translated back to its origins.” (Bassnett and
Trivedi 1999)
Crucial concepts


In-between, third space, hybridity, difference
Homi Bhabha: the discourse of colonial power
might be subverted by colonial hybridity >
translator is no longer a mediator, but deals with
overlappings
Lawrence Venuti
• Translation studeis needs to take into account
the value-driven nature of the sociocultural
framework
• Against Toury: there are no universal norms!
What is ‘just’ formal and linguistic resounds with
the surrounding culture: values, beliefs, social
representations, social institutions where the
translations are produced
Institutions:
• Governments
• Publishers
• Editors
• Literary agents
• Marketing teams
• Libraries
• Reviewers
• Festival organizers
“invisibility”
• To describe the translator’s situation in
contempoarry Anglo-American culture
• Produced by
– Translating “fluently”
– Pretending the TT is an “original”
Domestication of ST=
> Consequence of the prevailing
conception of authorship: translation is
still considered secondary, something to
be concealed
haec finis Priami fatorum, hic exitus illum
sorte tulit Troiam incensam et prolapsa uidentem
Pergama, tot quodam populis terrisque superbum
regnatorem Asiae. iacet ingens litore truncus,
auulsumque umeris caput et sine nomine corpus.
Thus fell the King, who yet surviv’d the State,
With such a signal and peculiar Fate.
Under so vast a ruine not a Grave,
Nor in such flames a funeral fire to have:
He, whom such Titles swell’d, such Power made proud
To whom the Scepters of all Asia bow’d,
On the cold earth lies th’unregarded King,
A headless Carkass, and a nameless Thing.
Domestication
= ethnocentric reduction of the foregn text to the
target-language cultural values
- transparent, fluent, invisible style
(Re: Schleiermacher: leave the reader in peace)
- Adherence to domestic literary canons (only
“adequate” texts are selected for translation)
Foreignization
= choosing a foreign text and developing a
translation that is not familiar
To register difference
To resist the ethnocentric violence of translation
Venuti is in favor of a non-fluent or estranging
translation style to make visible the presence of
the translator
Foreignizing or minoritizing
• Vanuti translates Igino Tarchetti, a 19° minor
Italian bohemien writer who challenged the
moral values of the day
Deliberate inclusion of foreignizing elements:
- American slang
- Close adherence to the ST structure and syntax
- Calques
- Archaisms
- British spellings
I had almost lost
hope of ever seeing you again;
and I asked myself if this thing
cutting me off
of images,
was the approach of death, or truly
some dazzling
vision of you
out of the past,
bleached, distorted,
fading:
(under the arches at Modena
I saw an old man in a uniform
dragging two jackals on a leash).
Foreignization-domestication:
heuristic concepts
• Foreignization translations tend to flaunt their
partiality instead of concealing it, but… it is
contingent! Its terms may change across time
and location
> Venuti’s work based on Antoine Berman
Berman
• Ethical aim of the translation: receive the foreign
as foreign
• Too many deforming forces in translation!
• Translating the novel: respect its shapeless
polylogic!
Deforming tendencies in Berman
• Rationalization
• Clarification
• Expansion
• Ennoblement
• Qualitative impoverishment
• Quantitative impoverishment
• The destruction of rhythms
• The destruction of underlying networks of signification
• The destruction of linguistic patternings
• The destruction of vernacular networks or their exoticization
• The destruction of expressions and idioms
• The effacement of the superimposition of languages
Berman’s work important…
…in linking philosophical ideas to translation
strategies
• His proposal: “literal translation” = attached to
the letter
La speranza di pure rivederti
m’abbandonava;
e mi chiesi se questo che mi chiude
ogni senso di te, schermo d’immagini,
ha i segni della morte o dal passato
è in esso, ma distorto e fatto labile,
un tuo barbaglio:
(a Modena, tra i portici,
un servo gallonato trascinava
due sciacalli al guinzaglio).