Date: Sat, 08 Mar 1997 14:43:01 -0300 (GRNLNDST)
From: John Milton <jmilton@usp.br>
Subject: Colloquium – questions
X-Sender: jmilton@swan.uspnet.usp.br
To: transfer-l@cc.uab.es
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Tony, Doug, Sean & Michael:
I’m enjoying the colloquium very much – let me come in with a couple of questions:
1) How do translators’ unions, cartels, price fixing enter both of your models?
Tony, isn’t your model extremely neo-liberal and would it say such laws and organisations would only be self-defeating in reducing the amount of translation on the market through excessively high rates.
For example, we never thought of having simultaneous interpretation at our Translators’ Forum in Fortaleza last October as the rates of the Brazilian Institute of Interpreters are so high – $500+ a day plus equipment. Such high rates can be afforded only by official bodies and big corporations, of which there are a sufficient number to keep the small number of members of the Brazilian Institute of Interpreters in clover. This seems an obvious case of price fixing which is in the interest of the cartel, not in the interest of the profession. As the amount of trade between Brazil and other countries increases and smaller companies, etc. find those rates excessive, are they going to employ non-recognised interpreters at a lower rate, Tony’s point at which there are maximum benefits for bothe sides, or or are they going to ignore interpretation and work in broken English?
2) If so much of the EU budget is spent on translation, why has this astage (?) never become a political football? Why has the British Tory government never latched onto it? Shouldn’t they look towards Calaceit for their advisors? Isn’t your position, Tony, very Thatcherite: free trade by all means, but cut out all the fat at Brussels?
3) And how relevant is Brussels to economic activity? Many German companies, e.g., Siemans, now do much of their worldwide business in English. This of course, creates problems for the popularity of the German language.
4) And Doug, isn’t the moving hand a little too naive for a complex economy?
John Milton, Univ. Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Date: Sat, 08 Mar 1997 17:47:15 -0500
From: Robert Bononno <rb28@is4.nyu.edu>
Subject: Re: Colloquium – questions
To: on-line conference <transfer-l@cc.uab.es> Errors-to: transfer-l-error@cc.uab.es
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John Milton wrote:
>For example, we never thought of having simultaneous interpretation at our Translators’ Forum in Fortaleza last October as the rates of the Brazilian Institute of Interpreters are so high – $500+ a day plus equipment. Such high rates can be afforded only by official bodies and
You had a translators’ forum. Couldn’t you have used some of your own members for that purpose?
>big corporations, of which there are a sufficient number to keep the small number of members of the Brazilian Institute of Interpreters in clover. This seems an obvious case of price fixing which is in the interest of the cartel, not in the interest of the profession. As the
Is the Brazilian Institute the only source of interpreters? Are companies required to use the services of the Institute? If not, I don’t see how it’s price fixing. It may be expensive but it’s not out of line with prices here in the U.S. or Europe. I also think you’re exaggerating a bit in referring to this as a cartel. Even if the Institute had a monopoly on supplying interpreters, I’m not sure that would make it a cartel or even very different from other “professional” organizations.
/robert
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Robert Bononno rb28@is4.nyu.edu CIS: 73670,1570
Date: Sat, 08 Mar 1997 18:56:31 -0500
From: daniel simeoni <simeonid@fox.nstn.ca> Subject: Is translation studies a ‘field’? To: transfer-l@cc.uab.es
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Robert writes:
>It was my impression that the field of Translation studies is fairly well
eeestablished but admits of a number of conflicting interpretations, none
oof >which seems to have had too much influence on the field as a whole. The scope >of the field is changing in interesting ways, I think, which is all for the >better, but unless I am reading you incorrectly, the field certainly exists.
Thanks for the opportunity to correct my initial response on an issue that I consider very important. You are absolutely right in focussing on the term “established”. It is exactly around this point that the whole issue revolves.
I fully agree with your (I hope widely shared) view of translation studies as a flourishing area of research in constant mutation that keeps projecting different and in my opinion at times, extremely creative ‘reframings’ of the multi-faceted object called ‘translation’. Yet, a case could be made that the various attempts so far have been by individuals positioned in locations NOT exclusively concerned with translation studies. This is particularly blatant in academic environments where translation scholarship is widely disseminated (fragmented?) among a host of disciplines, including national literatures, comparative literature, divinity schools, cultural studies, anthropology, language learning, even psychology lately and many others in addition to the Schools of translation (although mostly at graduate levels), not to mention an increasing number of independent scholars. In other words, there is as yet no institutional recognition of the area as anything more than appendages to long-established disciplines. Hence the good fortune of the definition of TS a number of years ago as an ‘interdiscipline’.
Now my point in the sentence quoted was that an interdiscipline does not amount to a FIELD. It is really a matter of how you call things of course and perhaps I should have used another term for the referent I am concerned with, but that’s the one I use given my training. Now I am prepared to recognize that things are changing – although not so fast as the sheer number of those investing their energy in this kind of research could justify. Publishers are certainly becoming more interested in the subject. Yet even this interest is very unequal. In some of the former (and current) empire-nations, translation studies are still being largely ignored, when they are not roundly looked down, or frowned, upon as illegitimate. This, btw, should not come as a big surprise. It is a well-known behaviour, fully to be expected whenever a field (in the sense I am using the term) has not cohered yet into a solid cluster of activities. Where are the departments, faculties, even Chairs of translation studies? Certainly a limited number of exceptions can be pointed out here and there but nothing like what exists in neighbouring disciplines. Note that I am using the academic example as a symptom, not an end in itself. Besides, universities as a whole may be taking a general orientation that makes the feasibility of instituting TS as a legitimate field of research within their walls even more dubious. It is just that, outside a (traditional) university environment, it is not clear to me where such a field with non-immediate practical consequences could develop. Universities, after all, have always served as a major instrument of legitimation.
Now why does this all matter? The first reason is obviously self-gratification. Everybody likes their work to be recognized. Very practical reasons enter into this too, having to do with access to resources – including funding. Translation scholars are no different than others in this respect. Research takes time and unless you are fortunate enough to be financially independent, money is needed. But there is a more general side to it also, at least in my view. Translation is a topic worthy of interest for its long-term cultural implications, increasingly more so in the current climate of so-called “globalisation”. It is my contention that, unless the field is widely recognized as an institutionally valid undertaking, i.e. as an AUTONOMOUS aggregate of attempts exclusively concerned with understanding what goes on under the name of ‘translation’, then, when the time comes to make the decisions that matter, under the umbrella of expert knowledge, in cultural and intercultural matters and in cross-cultural trends and exchanges, it is the other established orders that will run the show. This is why it is so very important that people like A. Pym and others position themselves forcefully in this grey area where research meets with politics and socio-economics. But their task would be greatly facilitated if they had the support of an ESTABLISHED field, recognized as such by the decision-makers. Of course in doing what they are doing, they are also instrumental in building the field. Hence my concluding words of optimism in the message you responded to, that ‘we are all working to build the field in question’.
There is tremendously interesting work being accomplished in TS and I am glad to see that we agree on this, but it should be known that that work cannot always find proper dissemination – the official recognition is still lacking. If there truly were a ‘field’ with all the attributes that go with it, this would not be the case.
Just a matter of what you put under a name, then. I should have been more explicit.
>I think another part of the problem is that the field itself keeps shifting >depending on the attitude and methodology of the investigator.
On this I disagree. I believe this is a sign of the area being productive and well on the way to becoming a field. Take linguistics for instance; even within each subdiscipline, methodologies differ considerably – which is perfectly normal since they neither have the same ‘object’ (even if it goes under the same name) nor the same presuppositions as to what constitutes it.
Daniel
Date: Sat, 08 Mar 1997 22:29:11 -0500
From: Robert Bononno <rb28@is4.nyu.edu>
Subject: Re: Is translation studies a ‘field’? To: on-line conference <transfer-l@cc.uab.es> Errors-to: transfer-l-error@cc.uab.es
X-Mailer: Claris Emailer 1.1
>>It was my impression that the field of Translation studies is fairly well
eeeestablished but admits of a number of conflicting interpretations, none
ooof >which seems to have had too much influence on the field as a whole. The scope >of the field is changing in interesting ways, I think, which is all for the >better, but unless I am reading you incorrectly, the field certainly exists.
Daneil writes:
>Thanks for the opportunity to correct my initial response on an issue that I consider very important. You are absolutely right in focussing on the term “established”. It is exactly around this point that the whole issue revolves.
>I fully agree with your (I hope widely shared) view of translation studies as a flourishing area of research in constant mutation that keeps projecting different and in my opinion at times, extremely creative ‘reframings’ of the multi-faceted object called ‘translation’. Yet, a case could be made that the various attempts so far have been by individuals positioned in locations NOT exclusively concerned with translation studies.
Well I think I would agree with that to some extent, although I’m not sure what the relative percentages are. Where for example are contributions outside the area of TS coming from? Departments of comp lit, English, philosophy, linguistics, etc. Aside from the field of linguistics, however, wouldn’t you say that the contributions from fields outside TS have been relatively recent and few? It seems that people directly involved in TS, notably outside the United States, have made the greatest number of contributions to the “field” in the past 20 years or so. Unless you classify people like Toury, Wilss, Lefevre, Nord, Reiss, as coming from outside the field.
>This is particularly blatant in academic environments where translation scholarship is widely disseminated (fragmented?) among a host of disciplines, including national literatures, comparative literature, divinity schools, cultural studies, anthropology, language learning, even psychology lately and many others in addition to the Schools of translation (although mostly at graduate levels), not to mention an increasing number of independent scholars. In other words, there is as yet no institutional recognition of the area as anything more than appendages to long-established disciplines. Hence the good fortune of the definition of TS a number of years ago as an ‘interdiscipline’.
This is the case here in the US, less so elsewhere. Look at Canada. Translation studies and terminology have been given a great deal of attention in the past 20-25 years. I can’t offhand think of another country were these disciplines play such an important academic role. While obviously a function of Canada’s social situation and officialized bilingualism, the Canadian schools could certainly provide a model of how to train practitioners in the field. It may not be the best or the only model, but it’s been tested in practice. Whether translation studies has achieved the status of more well-established disciplines is a slightly different question.
>Now my point in the sentence quoted was that an interdiscipline does not amount to a FIELD. It is really a matter of how you call things of course and perhaps I should have used another term for the referent I am concerned with, but that’s the one I use given my training. Now I am prepared to
Well, wouldn’t the existence of translator training programs in Canada and elsewhere attest to the recognition of TS as a distinct field. It has remaind interdisciplinary in the traditional academic environments, of course, but the traditional disciplines may have their own reasons for an increasing interest in translation, reasons that have no direct correlation with translation pedagogy, for example, much less terminology.
I’m now wondering what this actually signfies. Are the interdisciplinarians examing the same “object” of study at all? Clearly they’re looking for different things than the practitioners in translation studies programs, and their methodology tends to be considerably different. But the “referent” may not be the same either. You mentioned linguistics (well, so did I, but…). Well both linguistics and comp lit or critical theory both use and examine language, but they do so from very different points of view and for different reasons, one looking its structure and organization, the other its products and the way they function (I realize this is a gross oversimplification, but I think the distinction is clear). Now, we could say the same about translation. For many years those most actively engaged in translation research have approached it from the point of view of linguistics, with varying results. The object of study was the nature of the mechanism of translation, how does text X in French become text X’ in English, etc. I’m not discussing the merits of their results, simply trying to recognize its existence. The interdisciplinarians don’t see things from this point of view. The focus has been on texts and cultures, and translation’s role as a social object (ideological tool, work of art, element in a communications chains, etc.) that can be manipulated in a variety of ways. This sort of parallels the above distinction between linguists and most everyone else when looking at language monolingually. The great challenge to translation, however, is to somehow unify these two approaches. It is especially urgent if we intend to develop some meaningful form of translation pedagogy that doesn’t split the “field” down the middle: production of texts/examination of texts. I think this is very much the current situation and one of the reasons for our inability to actually define the field in question. Another aspect of this problem (to go back to what you mentioned above) is that the traditional academic disciplines are quite obviously not interested in text production but interpretation, hermeneutics. Since these are legitimate aspects of academic practice that have been validated through years of use, it is not surprising that translation has become “recognized” in the university, since it lends itself well to such investigation.
>justify. Publishers are certainly becoming more interested in the subject.
Yes, fortunately.
>Yet even this interest is very unequal. In some of the former (and current) empire-nations, translation studies are still being largely ignored, when they are not roundly looked down, or frowned, upon as illegitimate. This, btw, should not come as a big surprise. It is a well-known behaviour, fully to be expected whenever a field (in the sense I am using the term) has not cohered yet into a solid cluster of activities. Where are the departments, faculties, even Chairs of translation studies? Certainly a limited number
Canada, France, Germany, Austria.
>of exceptions can be pointed out here and there but nothing like what exists in neighbouring disciplines. Note that I am using the academic example as a symptom, not an end in itself. Besides, universities as a whole may be taking a general orientation that makes the feasibility of instituting TS as a legitimate field of research within their walls even more dubious. It is just that, outside a (traditional) university
Well, it’s become an adjunct of other disciplines, where it’s been all these years.
>environment, it is not clear to me where such a field with non-immediate practical consequences could develop. Universities, after all, have always served as a major instrument of legitimation.
Certainly they have. But I think it’s inaccurate to claim that translation doesn’t have immediate practical consequences. It has rather significant consequences and is a global business. I think if it didn’t have immediate practical consequences, Anthony Pym wouldn’t be so concerned with its effect on expenditures in the EU.
>Now why does this all matter? The first reason is obviously self-gratification. Everybody likes their work to be recognized. Very practical reasons enter into this too, having to do with access to resources – including funding. Translation scholars are no different than others in this respect. Research takes time and unless you are fortunate enough to be financially independent, money is needed. But there is a more general side to it also, at least in my view. Translation is a topic worthy of interest for its long-term cultural implications, increasingly more so in the current climate of so-called “globalisation”. It is my contention that, unless the field is widely recognized as an institutionally valid undertaking, i.e. as an AUTONOMOUS aggregate of attempts exclusively concerned with understanding what goes on under the name of ‘translation’, then, when the time comes to make the decisions that matter, under the umbrella of expert knowledge, in cultural and intercultural matters and in cross-cultural trends and exchanges, it is the other established orders that will run the show. This is why it is so very important that people
Yes, indeed. And they have been running the show already. You’d be surprised (or maybe not) at how much funding goes into work on natural langauge processing and AI. Very few (if any) of the researchers engaged in those fields are interested in translation per se, in spite of the amount of time spent on refining parsing algorithms and devevloping expert systems for corpus analysis.
>like A. Pym and others position themselves forcefully in this grey area where research meets with politics and socio-economics. But their task would be greatly facilitated if they had the support of an ESTABLISHED field, recognized as such by the decision-makers. Of course in doing what they are doing, they are also instrumental in building the field. Hence my concluding words of optimism in the message you responded to, that ‘we are all working to build the field in question’.
Perhaps. But one could continue to talk about the hermeneutics of translation, its history, etc., without having any effect at all on the way its practiced.
>There is tremendously interesting work being accomplished in TS and I am glad to see that we agree on this, but it should be known that that work cannot always find proper dissemination – the official recognition is still lacking. If there truly were a ‘field’ with all the attributes that go with it, this would not be the case.
I agree with you, so maybe I need to refine or restate my position. Maybe it’s actually several fields, but I’m not optimistic about our ability to merge them.
>>I think another part of the problem is that the field itself keeps shifting >depending on the attitude and methodology of the investigator.
>On this I disagree. I believe this is a sign of the area being productive and well on the way to becoming a field. Take linguistics for instance; even within each subdiscipline, methodologies differ considerably – which is perfectly normal since they neither have the same ‘object’ (even if it goes under the same name) nor the same presuppositions as to what constitutes it.
Well, if they don’t have the same “object” are they studying the same field? Linguistics subdisciplines have had the benefit of at least a shared past. They may have bifurcated along various lines with advances in the field, but the object of study has been “en gros” the same. A better parallel might be the divisions between linguistics, semantics, and pragmatics, all of which have played significant roles in shaping our appreciation of translation, yet remain separate fields. What does is it mean to say one is a “translation theorist” now? Not much unless you indicate your background and training and area of study. There are considerable differences between someone like Mounin and, say, George Steiner or Antoine Berman, or Toury.
Well, that’s enough for now. I’m running out of steam here. Hope I’ve been clear in what I’m trying to express. I’m still working my through it.
/robert
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Robert Bononno rb28@is4.nyu.edu CIS: 73670,1570
Date: Sun, 09 Mar 1997 15:26:36 +1000
From: E.Valverde@mailbox.uq.oz.au (Estela Valverde) Subject: On Robinson’s remarks
X-Sender: rmevalve@dingo.cc.uq.edu.au
To: transfer-l@cc.uab.es
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Doug writes:
If translators are powerless, why does everyone get so upset if they make mistakes or, worse, deliberately distort the text? An example I used in The Translator’s Turn: what if Schmidt, Hitler’s English interpreter, had told Chamberlain in 1938 not to trust the Germans. Hitler’s nuts, he’s bent on world domination, etc. He could have pretended to be interpreting Hitler’s German and instead warned the English about his boss. Powerless? I think not.
I think YES. Beyond the single defiant or subversive gesture your “invisible hands” would destroy the reputation of that translation that infringes the law of the father. If Schmidt would have misinterpreted Hitler he would have ended in the gas chamber. Translators’ accuracy is checked by the same “invisible hands” that constraint our performance.
A/Prof. Estela Valverde
Coordinator of Spanish
Dept. of Romance Languages
The University of Queensland
St. Lucia Qld. 4072
Australia
Fax: (61-7) 3365 2798
Telephone: (61-7) 3365 2277
Date: Sun, 09 Mar 1997 15:33:18 +1000
From: E.Valverde@mailbox.uq.oz.au (Estela Valverde) Subject: Live “chat” session
X-Sender: rmevalve@dingo.cc.uq.edu.au
To: transfer-l@cc.uab.es
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A live chat session would not be so difficult to organise and would be VERY exciting. Can Sean consult with the rest of the group and with his computer wizzards there and see whether we can have a go at it? You do not seem to be somebody who is overwhelmed by innovation!
A/Prof. Estela Valverde
Coordinator of Spanish
Dept. of Romance Languages
The University of Queensland
St. Lucia Qld. 4072
Australia
Fax: (61-7) 3365 2798
Telephone: (61-7) 3365 2277
Date: Sun, 09 Mar 1997 15:47:20 +1000
From: E.Valverde@mailbox.uq.oz.au (Estela Valverde) X-Sender: rmevalve@dingo.cc.uq.edu.au
To: transfer-l@cc.uab.es
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Netto says answering my question:
based upon my UN experience, I can assure you translators (or interpreters) NEVER should act as mediators. The commanding officer is always the one and only responsible for the decisions. Translators can help Commanding Officers to reach a decision, but I can’t see how they can be able to mediate without having the rank and the authority in the same level of the commanding officer. In my point of view, a mediator needs to be able to bargain, needs to have something to offer when necessary – needs to have power to decide when insist and when give up. And it will be very hard to find a good translator/interpreter capable to act as well as a mediator.
Is Pym still listening?
A/Prof. Estela Valverde
Coordinator of Spanish
Dept. of Romance Languages
The University of Queensland
St. Lucia Qld. 4072
Australia
Fax: (61-7) 3365 2798
Telephone: (61-7) 3365 2277
Date: Sun, 09 Mar 1997 16:27:36 +1000
From: E.Valverde@mailbox.uq.oz.au (Estela Valverde) X-Sender: rmevalve@dingo.cc.uq.edu.au
To: transfer-l@cc.uab.es
Errors-to: transfer-l-error@cc.uab.es
Bononno writes:
What does is it
mean to say one is a “translation theorist” now? Not much unless you indicate your background and training and area of study. There are considerable differences between someone like Mounin and, say, George Steiner or Antoine Berman, or Toury.
Perhaps the old Holmes’ article can still give us a preliminary mapping of what TS is all about and would answer the question of the validity of TS as a discipline. In all fields of study we will find theoretical discrepancies. We can pose the same question about linguistics to use your example. What does it mean to be a “linguistic theorist” today? There are also considerable differences between say Saussure and Chomsky. You would also need to indicate your background and training and area of study. There is also a lot of interdisciplinarity in linguistics. However nobody would deny that there is a field called linguistics, or do we?
Where are the departments,
>faculties, even Chairs of translation studies? Certainly a limited number
Canada, France, Germany, Austria.
We should not forget Israel. While I share your optimism on the expansion of TS, I feel that we still need to establish many more departments in TS to enhance the profile of our field and strengthen the research output.
A/Prof. Estela Valverde
Coordinator of Spanish
Dept. of Romance Languages
The University of Queensland
St. Lucia Qld. 4072
Australia
Fax: (61-7) 3365 2798
Telephone: (61-7) 3365 2277
Date: Sun, 09 Mar 1997 17:49:05 -0500
From: GL252251@Orion.YorkU.CA
Subject: more on the passive translator
X-Sender: GL252251@orion.yorku.ca (Unverified) To: transfer-l@cc.uab.es
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I want to ask a question about all those metaphors that have been used to portray the translator as a passive slave of someone — either the source author or the institution that commissioned the translation. Do any translators actually believe such a thing about themselves? In other words, would any translator, in his or her own mind, answer the question that defines the object of translation theory — what am I doing when I translate? — by saying: I am just a transparent mirror, a humble servant toiling in the vineyard of my author, etc etc?
Surely when translators use these metaphors themselves (for example in prefaces), it is largely if not entirely a matter of self-presentation — sometimes self-preservation. I am merely the humble slave of my author, the translator murmurs, in order to evade responsiblity for the content of the work being translated.
One group of people who commission my translations — people in the Canadian Dept. of Immigration — regularly request what they call a verbatim translation. A bizarre concept, the meaning of which they have never been able to clarify. Several years ago, I stopped asking what they meant. When the instruction is given orally, I simply make humble servant noises; when it comes in writing on the translation order form, I ignore it. That is, I know perfectly well that if the translation is going to serve its purpose in processing immigration or refugee claims, I am going to have to be more than a passive reflector of the wording of the often rather garbled source text (often it’s a transcript of an oral translation into French of what the claimant said in Turkish or whatever, and my task is to turn the transcript into English).
So if we want to identify the degree to which translators are under the control of the source text or commissioner, and the degree to which they create, we first need to distinguish self-presentation to the outside world from translators’ knowledge about what actually happens when they translate. I see some sort of research project here, interviewing translators at length with a view to bringing out this often hidden self-knowledge.
My own theoretical work aims to answer the what-am-I-doing-when-I-translate question in terms of the language act I am performing when I translate, which can then be distinguished from other language acts. The language act I use for this purpose is reported speech (I’m telling someone what someone else said). This has turned out (at least so I think) to be more than a statement of the obvious. Exploring the nature of direct reported speech in particular (that is, quotation) — a subject on which much has been written by linguists, literary theorists and others — is interesting precisely because it sheds light on the conscious and unconscious contributions of the reporting agent. One virtue of this approach is that it does not merely affirm that the translator makes a contribution; it enables one to think about the precise nature of that contribution. I’m just finishing writing another article on this subject, in which I distinguish translating from a variety of related acts, including ghostwriting, speaking from a script, mental language conversion by people writing or speaking in their second language, re-expressing ideas, and intralingual rewording (unlike some, I don’t agree that paraphrasing in a language is a kind of translation).
For those interested in this subject, a good place to start is a thought-provoking article in the journal Language by Herbert Clark and Richard Gerrig entitled Quotations as Demonstrations (Language vol 66, 4, 1990). Within translation studies, my colleague Barbara Folkart has written a book on translation and reported speech: Le conflit des enonciations: traduction et discours rapporte (Montreal: Editions Balzac 1991 ISBN 2-921425-00-9).
Finally, on the subject of translation and intercultural communication: Communication has two quite different senses: (1) conveying messages across language boundaries (2) promoting intercommunity understanding. My view is that translation accomplishes (1) but not (2). Indeed, as some of Anthony Pym’s writings suggest, translation can actively discourage (2), which can probably only be achieved (insofar as its a language matter) by learning other people’s languages.
In a Canadian context, I see my work as a federal translator as achieving (1). I’ve had letters from Quebec scientists thanking me for my translations of their writings because my presence means they can write in their own language and yet still be assured of a broader North American audience. But I don’t see how translation has in any way contributed to resolving the 200-year old conflict between French and English-speaking Canadians; it hasn’t promoted communication in the sense of understanding, and I don’t see how it could. That doesn’t bother me though; I’m quite happy to be contributing to (1). Goal (2) will be achieved, if at all, through political action, not through translation.
Brian Mossop
Translation Bureau
Public Works and Government Services Canada and York University School of Translation GL252251@orion.yorku.ca
Date: Sun, 09 Mar 1997 19:09:50 -0500 (EST) From: Anthony Pym <100701.3410@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Cartels?
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Errors-to: transfer-l-error@cc.uab.es
CARTELS
In reply to John Milton (hey, I just got a postcard you sent from Rome!)
On my last visit to Brazil I just happened to sit through a talk by the national president of the AIIC, the association of professional interpreters. This was a true ‘spirit-channeling’ session of the kind that might make Doug feel entirely motivated: in fact it was a list of the ‘great spirits’ this woman had had the privilege of conveying as she accompanied your great president Collor de Mello (or whatever) all over the world. Highpoints included Lady Di’s philosophical reflections at Hirohito’s funeral, and the likes. Once you’re in the club, intimated this woman to several hundred eager would-be interpreters, you too can hob-nob with the mighty. And the club, I might add, is hard to enter, requiring some 200 days of interpreting and recommendation by an interpreter who is already a member. Okay, a cartel.
(I might add that Brazil also had/has? a real problem with the fixed number of licences for sworn translators/interpreters, so that people were/are? effectively renting out their licences to other translators.)
(I might also add that the tyranny of conference interpreting is a far more general problem within translator training, to some extent institutionalized through the CIUTI.)
You can imagine with what pleasure I got up after the president- interpreter’s speech and argued that community interpreting (what I’ve now decided to call liaison interpreting) should be at the centre of translation studies, so that we can seriously undertake to provide services to people who really need them. That’s why I argue for cooperation instead of symbolic prestige.
Where interpreting services are too expensive, Brazilians will use their English or whatever, visitors will get used to listening to Portuguese or Brazilian English, communication will take place, as will a great deal of intercultural experience and practical language learning.
(You didn’t provide any interpreters for me in Sao Paulo… and that’s why I learned to understand Portuguese!)
More practically, non-AIIC interpreters can be used at lower rates, since they somehow have to gain 200 days of conference work before they can become members.
The other thing to do when there are just a few non-Portuguese speakers is sit behind them and offer a selective chuchotage.
I might also note that in Spain, where there are relatively few AIIC members, employers do not ask to see the interpreter’s qualifications.
The more serious problem is not price-fixing but the commercial exploitation of translators, especially those of the literary species. (See my note on Barcelona.)
Date: Sun, 09 Mar 1997 19:09:59 -0500 (EST) From: Anthony Pym <100701.3410@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Complexity
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Beware complexity
There is a sense in which terms like ‘complex external factors’ invite us to assume rather than grasp complexity. (Similarly, the term ‘polysystem’ enables research to proceed as if the ‘poly’ were not really there; i.e. as if the many contradictory sub-system really did act as one coherent system.)
If you want to know what ‘complex external factors’ are, at some stage you have to dive into history and try to swim through them.
The best example of this of which I am aware is:
Round, Nicholas. 1993. ‘Libro Llamado Fedron’. Plato’s ‘Phaedo’ translated by Pero Diaz de Toledo. London: Tamesis.
which analyzes a whole century of Hispanic economics, politics and social institutions in order to explain just one translation (and even then I still complain that not enough attention is given to cultural relations with Italy).
I try to do similar things to explain translations in twelfth and thirteenth century Hispania, though I don’t claim to be a scholar on Professor Round’s level.
My point is this: When you’re out there swimming through the myriad data, you need good strong models that can be applied, tested and modified. If not, you get lost; you forget why you’re there in the first place.
So please, if I suggest relatively simple models like ‘cooperation’ and ‘intercultural space’, please don’t write them off as reductive or nonhistorical.
I am using (and adapting) those same models in my historical work. They help me get a handle on complexity; and historical complexity at the same time helps me develop the models… since there are many, many things in translation history that I am totally unable to explain.
Date: Sun, 09 Mar 1997 19:09:59 -0500 (EST) From: Anthony Pym <100701.3410@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Complexity
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Beware complexity
There is a sense in which terms like ‘complex external factors’ invite us to assume rather than grasp complexity. (Similarly, the term ‘polysystem’ enables research to proceed as if the ‘poly’ were not really there; i.e. as if the many contradictory sub-system really did act as one coherent system.)
If you want to know what ‘complex external factors’ are, at some stage you have to dive into history and try to swim through them.
The best example of this of which I am aware is:
Round, Nicholas. 1993. ‘Libro Llamado Fedron’. Plato’s ‘Phaedo’ translated by Pero Diaz de Toledo. London: Tamesis.
which analyzes a whole century of Hispanic economics, politics and social institutions in order to explain just one translation (and even then I still complain that not enough attention is given to cultural relations with Italy).
I try to do similar things to explain translations in twelfth and thirteenth century Hispania, though I don’t claim to be a scholar on Professor Round’s level.
My point is this: When you’re out there swimming through the myriad data, you need good strong models that can be applied, tested and modified. If not, you get lost; you forget why you’re there in the first place.
So please, if I suggest relatively simple models like ‘cooperation’ and ‘intercultural space’, please don’t write them off as reductive or nonhistorical.
I am using (and adapting) those same models in my historical work. They help me get a handle on complexity; and historical complexity at the same time helps me develop the models… since there are many, many things in translation history that I am totally unable to explain.
Date: Sun, 09 Mar 1997 19:09:45 -0500 (EST) From: Anthony Pym <100701.3410@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Barcelona
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BARCELONA
The theory/practice divide often overlooks the importance of straight empirical work.
An example:
Rodriguez Morato, Arturo. 1997. La problematica profesional de los escritores y traductores. Una vision sociologica. Barcelona: ACEC.
This is a sociological survey of writers and translators who are members of the Catalan Writers’ Association. The basic finding is that they’re getting screwed: 32% of the writers and 37% of the translators say they have had serious problems trying to get publishers to pay them. That is, a lot of publishers are simply to respecting the contracts they sign.
Now, this is a survey of the writers and translators who are professional enough to belong to an association. Just think of what the problems are like in the vast penumbra of part-timers!
The problem is that, without the sociological survey, the exploitation would be little more than a series of anecdotes. No one would take it too seriously; little official action would be taken. The sociologist can come along and show the practitioners what is happening at a level that none of them can perceive individually.
That’s one important way ‘theory’ can help change ‘practice’.
I might add that Monique Caminade and myself did our international survey of translator-training institutions for quite similar reasons. You come along and show people something that exists beyond the level of their individual anecdotes and opinions.
Now, one of the solutions to the non-payment of translators in Barcelona is for the association of writers and translators to re-negotiate agreements with the association of publishers. That is, the two social groups can sit down and seek a properly cooperative relationship, since the existence of good well-paid translators is in the long-term interests of both groups.
I don’t think my theory contradicts the possibility of such arrangements. I’m not arguing for the market and nothing but the market. Like most of our muddling socialists in Europe, I believe there should be collective regulation of the market at those points where it doesn’t work. In other words, we have to be prepared to guide the Guiding Hand. And translation theory should be able to help us do that.
Date: Sun, 09 Mar 1997 19:09:54 -0500 (EST) From: Anthony Pym <100701.3410@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Causation in translation
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Causation in translation
Daniel Simeoni remarks that my use of the term ’cause’ seems not to be very helpful.
I agree that it is very unfashionable.
And yet, in the two typscripts I have here on my desk (one on ethics, the other on history), ‘causation’ is the only half-shared chapter.
I talk about causes because
1. Public debate on translation frequently invokes causal relationships that simply don’t stand up in court. Here in yesterday’s El Pais I read that translations into Catalan decreased by 31% between 1990 and 1995 and that this implies a lack of openness, therefore a need for more subsidies for translations. Implication: the more translations a language has, the more open it is, and the better it will be. Translations cause improvement of some kind. Okay. The same article adds that in 1995 (i.e. in one year?) the number of books published in Catalan rose by 30.6 %. Now, that latter figure should indicate the strength of publishing in that language, thus potentially contradicting the argument that translations are needed to make it stronger (or better?). Either way, it is very hard to establish a direct causal connection between the two figures, and thus hard to argue, in causal terms, why there should be more subsidies for translations into Catalan. In fact, what bothers me is that the initial argument – that more translations are needed in order to keep the language open – assumes that there is some kind of perpetual social causation involved in translation, whereas what I keep finding – along with many others – is that translation works within a limited time frame, often to help build up a language or literature which can then take off and develop largely of its own accord. Perhaps the number of translations has dropped because they are no longer required, or because better education means that more people read in foreign languages, etc. To talk about causes is to ask people to think about their arguments a little more seriously.
2. A model of multiple causation (yes, using Aristotle as a base) is actually quite a useful way of asking questions about complex social relationships, usually reaching the answer that translations are produced and are ‘successful’ only when many different causes come together.
3. A model of multiple causation is also a useful way of assessing translation theories: I just ask what, according to such and such a theory, is the cause of a translation. Most theories limit their vision to just one or two causes. Few envisage the role of the translator as efficient cause.
Date: Sun, 09 Mar 1997 19:09:39 -0500 (EST) From: Anthony Pym <100701.3410@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Authority
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AUTHORITY
Should we tell translators how to translate?
Since I’m interested in the ethics of translation, I frequently find myself accused of wanting to tell translators how to translate. I thus start to look like a ‘a hardheaded empirical economic theorist’ seeking to impose just one set of rules on everyone else. And it gets worse: In Paris I once gave a series of lectures on the ethics of translation only to have Jean-Rene Ladmiral tell me he was against the very idea of such an ethics, which could only be restrictively prescriptive. There have also been a few similar reproaches from Brazil, but they don’t merit further comment.
Let me reply as follows:
First, in an obscure 1992 text I wrote, as a section heading, ‘translation theory should not lecture translators’. Why not? Because, I said at the time, the practical function of public theory [see notes on Theory and Practice] is not primarily to tell translators what they should be doing but to open authoritative academic space from which translators can be recognized as professionals. Public theorizing can transfer authority from the academy to practising translators. And this can happen no matter how inept the theory.
Second, public theory tends to legitimize at most a few patches of translational practice at the same time as it presents those patches as being authoritative in their own right. There is more symbiosis than it commonly believed.
Third, theorizing practitioners are mostly able to solve their own historical problems, at least in the long run. What public theorists should do is learn actively from their practice.
All that from Translation and Text Transfer, pp. 190-191.
So why should I now get stuck into ethics? And why should I risk presenting an apparently simply principle (cooperation) as a solution to all problems?
The simple reason is that I do so as a recherche, as a search for orientation on both the practical and theoretical levels. As a translator, I feel a lack of ethical orientation; I am unsatisfied with the tautologies and occasional mercenarism of Hundlungstheorie and Skopostheorie; I need to think through and justify my activity to myself. If I should then write up and present a progress report to others, I do it as no more than that, in the hope that it will be discussed, that the process might enable the recherche to proceed further.
As a public theorist, I feel that need even more acutely. I wasn’t born in translation studies; I came to the discipline from Comparative Literature and Sociology; and in the 20 odd years it’s taken me to get here I’ve only really had one question to answer: How should cultures interrelate? A question of ethics, thanks to the modal ‘should’. A hell of a lot of research is needed before any answer to that question can be ventured. What worries me now, though, is that the question is no longer even being asked in translation studies.
As I start to get some kind of answers to the big questions, I am very interested in circulating those propositions to whomever wants to listen. But I’m not particularly interested in telling translators how to translate. Unless they ask me what I think, in which case I tell them.
Part of the problem is the descriptive/prescriptive divide, which should have been overcome long ago (there is no such thing as pure description; we’re involved in change processes that concern both practice and theory; the more one is self- critically aware of that involvement, the better).
Another part of the problem is that my ethics proposes what looks like a very simple principle: cooperation. Are you all now so sophisticated that you’re frightening by simplicity?
Yet the principle of cooperation is not at all simple. Despite my pedagogical presentation, the principle can incorporate countless social determinants; it can give us a way to think through numerous claims to priority; it might even come close to what Lukacs termed the ‘ethical beauty’ able to posit both abstract subjectivity and the multiplicity of lived social experience. And yet, despite all that, when I argue the case seriously (well, in Pour une ethique du traducteur), I have few qualms about describing cooperation as an operational fiction, of interest only to the extent that it might help solve practical problems ensuing from the intercultural status of the translator’s profession (the latter, I might add, is a working hypothesis, not an operational fiction).
FREE SAMPLE FROM
Pour une ethique du traducteur (Presses Universitaires d’Artois, 1997 if we’re lucky):
La responsabilite comme base de l’ethique
Nous avons pose que le traducteur est responsable. C’est evident. Parler d’ethique du traducteur n’aurait sinon aucun fondement. Si le traducteur n’etait pas responsable, s’il n’avait a accepter de responsabilite pour aucun de ses choix, il n’aurait aucun probleme d’ordre ethique et donc aucune demande de principes susceptibles de guider sa pratique. Pour lui, le travail du theoricien serait de pure gratuite. Fin de livre. Mais puisque, en tant que theoricien muni d’une premiere personne, je pretends aider le traducteur – comme diraient la plupart des theoriciens -, je ne puis faire autrement que de partir du presuppose de sa responsabilite. Il semble qu’on ne puisse contourner la base axiomatique de toute ethique du traducteur : le traducteur est responsable.
Prenons maintenant une autre voix, celle du traducteur capable lui aussi de s’inventer une premiere personne. En tant que traducteur, je me sens responsable, que l’ethique me definisse ou non comme tel. Cette responsabilite est mal definie, genante, souvent ressentie comme une sorte de culpabilite, inspiree sans doute par des relations sociales trop empreintes de bonne volonte morale. Ce sentiment confus, enveloppe de mille autres pulsions, pensees, strategies, me pousse a rechercher des criteres qui puissent orienter certains de mes choix futurs d’une facon plus ou moins raisonnee, comme si le reste n’existait pas. Ce sentiment appelle une fiction rationaliste. Et je me mets a la recherche de la fiction. Apres tout, une telle ethique pourrait me permettre d’acquerir une certaine assurance et – pourquoi pas ? – une tout autre dignite au sein meme de ces relations sociales. C’est en tant que traducteur que je cherche une ethique professionnelle, et cela dans la mesure ou je me sens responsable.
Si la responsabilite est le presuppose de tout discours ethique, elle decoule aussi du sentiment de celui qui cherche un discours ethique particulier.
Date: Sun, 09 Mar 1997 19:10:16 -0500 (EST) From: Anthony Pym <100701.3410@CompuServe.COM> Subject: READ ME
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CONTENTS
With which we have given Americans time to be Americans, and a few other voices to surface and resurface.
Yet I’m disappointed at the restricted number of active participants. No doubt it is time to address a few issues that are somehow more central to translation studies, indeed more traditional.
Drawing on the odd comment here and there, keeping it as brief as possible, I divide my notes into the following topics, such that you may select only those likely to be of interest:
Self-interest: The legitimacy of self-interest Authority: Should we tell translators how to translate? Theory in practice
Thatcherism? Reply to John Milton
Cartels. More replies to John
Barcelona: A sociology of translators in Barcelona Translators are not negotiators (I didn’t say they were!) TS as Field: The independence of translation studies Inherent nature: The inherent nature of translation Complexity: Beware complexity
Subjects: How to study translational subjectivity Causation in translation
DTS: Can Toury’s DTS bear a subject?
Reason: The rationalist subject in translational ethics Popper: Problem-solving and Popper
Derrida and mourning
What is an interculture?
Hope some of it is worth the wait.
For future colloquia, I would suggest debating just one clear proposition.
Anthony Pym
Date: Sun, 09 Mar 1997 19:10:06 -0500 (EST) From: Anthony Pym <100701.3410@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Inherent natures
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The inherent nature of translation
Doug isn’t interested in the inherent nature of anything. And I can’t say I’m too ecstatic about the term either. And yet:
Translation studies should define its object of study as clearly as possible; it should collect data that enter into that definition; it should then be able to ask questions about that data, finding answers that we did not have before.
I don’t know if that implies any ‘inherent nature of translation’. Yet when I do it, and I ask those questions, something somewhere beyond myself, in a kind of logic of social discourse, does give answers.
I can, for example, posit that translational discourse does not allow performatives to be rendered as functional performatives. I study a small corpus of ST performatives and their TTs; I discover that some relations between ST and TT performatives/constatives are possible but not necessary, while others seem impossible and still others are necessary.
Or I can do the same for logics of ST and TT quantities.
And again for the use of first-person pronouns in translational discourse.
Am discovering the ‘inherent nature of translation’. No, not really: I’m answering questions on the basis of an object of study that I defined in order to solve problems. Note also that the object of study can be delimited for strategic or political reasons: since I don’t like he tyranny of conference interpreting I refuse to pursue distinctions between oral and written translating; and since I am interested in finding alternatives to translation I argue in favour of a restrictive definition of the latter.
But we must use some data-testing process in order to discover more world than we know already.
Translation studies, I believe, requires a little more than recycling our notes on last week’s adventures in the library. We can’t just string together interesting ideas then write at the bottom ‘translation is like that’, in the spirit of the Reader’s Digest philosophy ‘life’s like that’.
Many different theories are possible, yet it is not true that all theories can be applied equally well to all objects.
FREE SAMPLE OF
Method in Translation History (to appear somewhere, sometime)
In defence of definitions
Since we are dealing with translation history, let me now focus on the limit most likely to concern all our research projects. At some point a distinction will have to be made between translations and nontranslations. Borderline cases will have to be disentangled, some going into the translation corpus, others onto the heap of nontranslations, and still others-why not?-constituting a special list of borderline cases. Any criteria we invent to solve these problems must involve a working definition of
what-a-text-must-have-if-it-is-to-be-a-translation (‘translationality’ is a simpler term), not as an eternally fixed truth but as a strictly operative set of distinctions considered suitable for a particular question, applicable to a particular corpus, and particularly changeable if they turn out to be unsuitable. The frustrating problem, though, is that several camps oppose the very idea of having a definition of translation. Here is a quick survey of the opposition:
– Descriptivists of various persuasions tend to criticise exclusive definitions as being inevitably prescriptive in that they involve some evaluative notion of what a translation should be, in fact an implicit distinction between good and bad translations. To avoid the smell of prescriptivism, some descriptivists try to absolve the researcher of all responsibility in this respect, pretending to locate their definitions wholly in the object under study.
– For relativists of all kinds, definitions tend to be imperialist in that they impose our ideas about translation on the ideas of other cultures. According to this argument, we cannot fully know the limits of translations in other cultures because we can never fully liberate ourselves from our own culture-bound modes of thought.
– On a related tack, deconstructionists and their sympathisers tend to regard all definitions as being unacceptably essentialist, and exclusive definitions as being downright reactionary.
In the face of this three-pronged attack, dare we still separate translations from nontranslations? Of course we should; we must. Whatever particular objection we want to grapple with, we have to apply some kind of definition just to break our lists down to manageable sizes. Either that, or we abandon quantitative research altogether. For as long as we find some virtues in lists, one of the functions of working definitions must be to save us from unimportant or impossible work, which is another way of saying that definitions allow us to seek worthwhile work. They should be working definitions in every sense of the word. The best way to reply to the purists is thus perhaps to point out that, in formulating and applying exclusivist limits, at least we can see our hands getting dirty; we should know enough about work to want to make it count. Yes, we are using some kind of initial evaluation (we opted for an initial field), yes, we are asking our own important questions (not those of unknown cultures) and yes, our definitions are motivated interventions that cannot help but work for or against processes of historical change (our definitions are moving in the world). All of this ensues from our desire to deal with important questions. Further, in the process of applying inclusive then exclusive definitions, along with any number of necessary loops, we can be taken beyond at least some of our unreasoned evaluations and unfelt cultural blinkers. In fact, if working definitions are formulated and applied with more rigour than common sense, they should force us to measure our preconceptions rather than impose them directly on the world. As long as we have no illusions about what we are doing, as long as working definitions are applied strictly and reworked explicitly, no transcendental crime need result-although we can always be damned for the imperialism of seeking knowledge, and the socialism of counting human facts.
Date: Sun, 09 Mar 1997 19:10:19 -0500 (EST) From: Anthony Pym <100701.3410@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Self-interest
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The legitimacy of self-interest
Michael Cronin feels that my use of Hobsbawm forecloses discussion, since I virtually say we only support the cause of translation because it is in our self-interest to do so.
Yet I only ‘virtually’ say this. Within an ethics of cooperation, it is legitimate to pursue one’s self-interest if this interest is compatible with the long-term advancement of the people we are dealing with. The ‘examination-passing classes’ may thus call for all the translations they like, even literary translations into Irish, if and when they can see how this will be of benefit to someone beyond their own collectivity.
Translators, especially, should be encouraged to pursue their own interests, yet they may seek some conceptual framework in order to work out how their cause can really be of benefit to long-term cooperation between the people they work and translate for.
‘More work for us and our students!’ Well, yes. I really do want this to eventuate.
(Perhaps I’m being attributed with excessive irony: Note that when, in another place, I declare myself to be a ‘fan of Venuti’s’, I really do mean it.)
The trick is that one
has to *think* as well, beyond the more immediate relationships: you really have to try to say why the world will be a better place when there are more literary translations into Irish, or whatever.
Date: Sun, 09 Mar 1997 19:10:34 -0500 (EST) From: Anthony Pym <100701.3410@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Theory in practice
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THEORY IN PRACTICE
Doug said somewhere there that he wanted to change translation theory, not practice. But I think Doug would agree with me that there is a lot of theorization in practice, so the argument is difficult to maintain unless we make distinctions along institutional lines. That’s why I prefer to talk about ‘public theorizing’, the kind that gets published and paid for.
When one looks at the history of translation (practice and theory) on the level of centuries (in my case translation history in Hispania), there can be little doubt that public theorists are involved in change processes that also occur on the level of translation practice. The relations may be very indirect, but they are there. One of the main reasons is that ideas about translation are transferred through much the same intercultural networks as translations themselves; when the main texts of Italian Renaissance Humanism came into Spain, so did new ideas about the practice of translation, with corresponding changes in vocabulary, etc. But I don’t want to give a history lesson here.
This is not a deterministic relationship: public theorists are involved in much the same networks as translators; they thus cannot help affecting what translators do (or impeding change); yet they can also exert wilful influence on what translators do, especially through sub-networks such as training institutions and official language policies.
Example: The terms used to describe the field of community/ liaison interpreting. As an American noted somewhere there, the names change when segments of the profession gain in prestige and respectability. Public theorists, just by using one term or another, can have quite direct influence at this level, helping to change the political relationships between the various segments of the profession.
For me, one of the main reasons for engaging in public theory is precisely to participate in such processes.
Date: Sun, 09 Mar 1997 19:10:29 -0500 (EST) From: Anthony Pym <100701.3410@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Thacherism?
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THATCHERISM
John Milton presents an interesting double bind: he complains about interpreters’ cartels, and in the same breath accuses me of being Thatcherite (ooh, now *that* hurts!).
On the latter: The principle of cooperation does not ascribe values of content. Nor does it predetermine the dimensions of the pertinent agents. Michael Cronin is free, if he likes, to write in ‘development of minor literatures’ as a content value, see ‘languages’ as the pertinent agents, and then apply the principle of cooperation in order to distribute his efforts. My ethics can only suggest he should still ensure the long-term well-being of the parties he is engaging with.
In my comments on Europe I tend to see the content finality as ‘integration’ and the pertinent agents as social groups of information managers (I don’t think Thatcherism would make either of those attributions). I thus oppose, mostly, the Gaullist
‘Europe des patries’.
My complaint about the excessive costs of the EU’s official language policy is thus not a call for efficiency for efficiency’s sake. I want to reduce the costs that bolster up linguistic nationalism, and thus increase the budgets that might truly favour integration.
Yet that, of course, is an inscription of my personal ideology into the principle of cooperation. I believe the principle itself has wider ethical validity.
(Is the cooperation principle then ideologically neutral? No, not at all. It insists, for example, that there is a lot more to translation than the comparing of texts. It also insists, in the face of the hermeneutics of anterior difference or authenticity, that thought on translation should also be oriented toward the future, to what can be done when we confront these problems tomorrow or next year.)
Am I flirting with neo-liberalism? Yes, of course. It’s one of the consequences of my deep mistrust of intellectuals who seem to know everything and who seek to intervene with almost divine self-assurance.
But the labels don’t worry me. I’m really more interested in trying to solve problems. And the problem here, for me, is to know when one should translate and when one should seek some alternative form of cross-cultural communication. I’ll look closely at any alternative solutions you care to propose.
Date: Sun, 09 Mar 1997 19:10:24 -0500 (EST) From: Anthony Pym <100701.3410@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Subjects
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How to study translational subjectivity
Doug and I agree that it’s time human translators were shifted centre- stage in translation studies.
For me, this is partly in reaction to dehumanized DTS models where translators (and theorists?) become bearers of target-system functions. If nothing else, the model of intercultural space, where systems overlap and contradict each other, should allow us to formulate a far less passive subjectivity.
I also see the study of translators as a way of opening space for intercultural studies, if only because the extensive pluriactivity of translators forces us to look
at a lot more than translation.
So how can we find out about this subjectivity? Four possibilities:
1. Introspection by translator-theorists. 2. Translators’ self-reporting, to be analyzed in psychological, psycholinguistic, psychoanalytical, sociological or sociolinguistic terms.
3. The collecting of historical data on translators. 4. The development of models of translators’ social relations, notably as a way of questioning and testing ethical propositions.
Work on any of these levels should not exclude awareness of findings on others. In fact, methodological weakness results when we focus on just one approach, as if we were all translators (1); as self-reporting did not involve distortion (2); as if all historical data and all historical translators were immediately pertinent to the questions we want answered (3) or as if the coherence of abstract principles were enough to solve real problems (4).
My own work is at levels 3 and 4, at the same time, with each feeding into the other. Unfortunately this means that when I present models of ethics, it looks like I’m ignoring history, and vice versa. My subject is abstract on the one hand (though not limited to the rational egoist) and historically social on the other. Both sides are needed.
I have a problem, though, with the use of interiority in explanations. My example here is Henri Albert, the first main translator of Nietzsche into French. When I wrote up his ‘lives’, my analysis moves through the sociopolitical setting, the functions of translations in the French journals, the significance of Albert’s origins in Alsace, how and why he learned German there, why he adopted a pseudonym and moved to Paris, how his father was integrated into the German Reichsland, where Albert’s family came from, why his brothers all dispersed, the probable relationship between his homosexuality and his misogyny; the mystery of his relationship with his mother… Now, at some point in all this, most readers have objected that we don’t need to go so far into the man’s private life… I could argue, of course, that all this information helps explain why Albert’s Nietzsche was, like the translator, particularly germanophobe and misogynist. And yet I must agree that the strictly internal factors are only important in that numerous external, social factors allowed that kind of Nietzsche to be translated, published and feted at that particular conjuncture. The internal factors are interesting, but they are not in themselves explanations.
By the way, I regard the *Translators through History* book (ed. Jean Delisle and Judith Woodsworth) as a useful attempt to base translation history on human translators. Yet it’s not altogether satisfying in intellectual terms: why look at these translators and not others?; why these particular chapter divisions?; and what problem is the book designed to address? That is, the volume is a mine of fascinating information at level 3, but needs to be combined with models from the other levels as well.
(Please, if you’ve got the book, please go to the index and change ‘Tarragona’ to ‘Tarazona’, and ‘Santillana’ to ‘Santalla’, both there and on the pages mentioned. Invisible hands seem to have ‘corrected’ these parts of my contributions, although I may be responsible for the ‘Santillana’ one.)
Date: Sun, 09 Mar 1997 19:10:10 -0500 (EST) From: Anthony Pym <100701.3410@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Not negotiators
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TRANSLATORS ARE NOT NEGOTIATORS
Haroldo Netto argued that translators should not be negotiators. He’s right, at least to the extent that we’re talking about the translators who are actually translating. i.e. adopting that particular professional persona.
The term ‘negotiation’ is widely misused in translation theory, usually when theorists don’t want to think too clearly about what actually happens (cf. Venuti’s ‘translators negotiate cultural difference’…. What the hell does that mean?).
When I configure translators as intermediaries, I place them between negotiators. The trick is that I then try to find ways those translating intermediaries can still have some agency, mainly through a conscious distribution of effort.
That said, the theory of transaction costs is addressed not just to translators but also to the negotiators who employ translators.
Sorry to insist on this. But you see, I studied negotiation theory back in 1984 (which is why all my references are old); I thought that translators *could* be seen as negotiators; it took me about ten years to see that the ‘transaction costs’ idea was a far better link between translation and negotiation.
(I might add that ‘translation as a transaction cost’ is one of the few ideas that I’m proud of. Perhaps because it took so much work to reach it. Also because it’s so damn simple and, to me, now, obvious.)
Date: Sun, 09 Mar 1997 19:10:37 -0500 (EST) From: Anthony Pym <100701.3410@CompuServe.COM> Subject: TS as field
To: transfer <transfer-l@cc.uab.es>
Errors-to: transfer-l-error@cc.uab.es
THE INDEPENDENCE OF TRANSLATION STUDIES
Sorry to disappoint Daniel Simeoni and others, but I don’t think translation studies should become an institutionalized field.
Reasons:
1. TS does not have sufficient conceptual tools to respond to the major questions it faces (e.g. to answer the question ‘when should one translate’ we have to go outside translation studies);
2. The associated academic politics are debilitating and sometimes intellectually insulting;
3. Independence would weaken our capacity to contribute to some kind of collective awareness among the groups of information managers who increasingly hold effective social power; 4. Research funding these days – at least in my part of the world – is not dependent on having an established academic discipline. It is enough to address socially significant problems.
I am happy with the term ‘interdiscipline’.
I would be happier if there were a bigger interdiscipline called ‘intercultural studies’.
The above is a summary of a paper called ‘Why translation studies should be homeless’, to be published in Translation and Multidisciplinarity. Ed. Marcia A.P. Martins y Heloisa G. Barbosa. Rio de Janeiro: PUC, UFRJ.
Now for what you’ll really hate: I believe that on the intellectual level (beyond institutional constraints) translation studies should study translation/translators in terms of equivalence. That is, I don’t care about the institutions but I do care about focusing on a well-defined object of study. See INHERENT NATURE.
Date: Sun, 09 Mar 1997 23:00:10 -0500
From: Robert Bononno <rb28@is4.nyu.edu>
Subject: Re: Barcelona
To: transfer <transfer-l@cc.uab.es>
Errors-to: transfer-l-error@cc.uab.es
X-Mailer: Claris Emailer 1.1
>The problem is that, without the sociological survey, the exploitation would be little more than a series of anecdotes. No one would take it too seriously; little official action would be
Well, the translators probably would.
>taken. The sociologist can come along and show the practitioners what is happening at a level that none of them can perceive individually.
Would an external survey organization been capable of something similar? Just to collect the data in a systematic manner.
/robert
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Robert Bononno rb28@is4.nyu.edu CIS: 73670,1570
Date: Sun, 09 Mar 1997 23:01:19 -0500 (EST) From: KAUGCS@aol.com
Subject: Re: TS as field
To: 100701.3410@compuserve.com, transfer-l@cc.uab.es Errors-to: transfer-l-error@cc.uab.es
Re: institutionalizing translation studies, I don’t see much of a chance for that either. Before we get too carried away about translation as a field of “scientific”
research, we should be clear about what translation is and what it isn’t. We have to be clear about it that translation is a process that takes place (or at least can take place) on any level of human endeavor. In the act of translation the translator draws on his accumulated life experience, and the level of that experience, and the translator’s skill in utilizing this experience, will determine and influence his/her success as a translator. Do we look at translation as a neurolinguistic, psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic, or socioanthropological phenomenon, or do we take all of these aspects into consideration when we try to analyze what translation is? If it takes place on so many levels, how can we come up with a single “theory of translation”? How in the world can we generalize? The most that we could hope for are comparative studies and rules for specific language pairs. I can’t imagine a “what if?” scenario that would be able to cover all languages at once.
Karl J. Kaussen
UC Berkeley Extension
and
Global Communication Service
fax: (415) 751-5980
email: kaugcs@aol.com