Translation

Susan Bassnett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135084646
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Übersetzen & Dolmetschen

In a time when millions travel around the planet; some by choice, some driven by economic or political exile, translation of the written and spoken word is of ever increasing importance. This guide presents readers with an accessible and engaging introduction to the valuable position translation holds within literature and society.

Leading translation theorist, Susan Bassnett traces the history of translation, examining the ways translation is currently utilised as a burgeoning interdisciplinary activity and considers more recent research into developing technologies and new media forms.

Translation displays the importance of translation across disciplines, and is essential reading for students and scholars of translation, literary studies, globalisation studies, and ancient and modern languages.

1

THE ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF TRANSLATION STUDIES

BEGINNINGS

Despite the historical significance of translation, systematic investigation into translation is a relatively recent phenomenon. Of course individual translators have, from time to time, commented on their practice, in prefaces, essays, notes and letters, but the first extended critical account of translation in English is generally held to be Alexander Fraser Tytler’s Essay on the Principles of Translation, which appeared in 1791. Tytler was a Scottish lawyer who translated some of Petrarch’s sonnets and a play by Schiller, and who formulated a set of principles for determining good translation, expressing the view that a translator needed to possess genius akin to that of the original author for a translation to succeed. Tytler’s essay is barely known today, although it went through several editions, the last of which appeared in 1813, the same year in which his German contemporary, Friedrich Schleiermacher gave his lecture entitled Methoden des Übersetzens at the Royal Academy of Sciences in Berlin. Schleiermacher’s lecture continues to be relevant and has served as the basis for much modern theorizing about translation, as we see most notably in the foreignization/domestication debate raised in a twentieth-century context by Lawrence Venuti. Schleiermacher distinguished between two types of translation, the first being when a translator seeks to make the original author speak as though he or she had written originally in the translator’s language. This is what Venuti terms acculturation, and that Schleiermacher refutes as a foolish enterprise, more like paraphrase or imitation, in his terms, than genuine translation. Instead, what the translator should do is to remind the reader that the world of the original was a different world, since the purpose of all translation is to give readers ‘an enjoyment of foreign works as unadulterated as possible’ (Schleiermacher, 1992 [1791]: 52).

Arguably, the point at which systematic investigation into the processes of translation started was during the Second World War (1939–45). This is the view of James Holmes, an American translator-scholar resident in the Netherlands, in his important paper, ‘The Name and Nature of Translation Studies’ that first appeared in 1972. Holmes first coined the term ‘translation studies’ in that paper, and his work was of great importance in the early stages of the growth of the subject. Holmes sums up prevailing attitudes to the study of translation:

After centuries of incidental and desultory attention from a scattering of authors, philologians, and literary scholars, plus here and there a theologian or an idiosyncratic linguist, the subject of translation has enjoyed a marked and constant increase in interest on the part of scholars in recent years, with the Second World War as a kind of turning point.

(Holmes, 2000 [1972]: 173)

What Holmes does not discuss in detail here is why this should have been the case, although he knew well the reason for it. The renewed interest in translation can be said to have been linked to a failed experiment: the success of code-breaking technology developed towards the end of the war raised hopes in the ensuing Cold War period that technology might also enable instant translation. Computers, which were rapidly being developed, could surely be programmed to ensure that decision-makers in Washington could have access to Russian media and vice versa within hours. The utopian desire for instant computer translations was never achieved because it was premised on naïve ideas about equivalence as sameness, and hence the early attempts to produce instant translations of Russian newspapers such as Pravda occasionally resulted in gobbledygook. The kinds of computer translation packages available today are extraordinarily sophisticated in comparison with the early experiments, but although some of the attempts at translation through computers in the Cold War period now appear risible, the experiment did raise important questions about interlingual transfer processes and about the meaning of equivalence. James Holmes was indeed perceptive to highlight the Second World War as a turning point in the study and practice of translation around the world.

THE LEUVEN GROUP

In the 1970s a small loosely-knit international group of academics began meeting to talk about ways of studying translation. They came from mixed backgrounds in terms of their intellectual formation: some were trained in literary theory, some had a background in linguistics, some were working in comparative literature. Nationalities in the group included Dutch, Belgian, Israeli, Slovak, American, German and English and all had a multilingual background of one kind or another. What brought them together, apart from the fact that they all had experience of translating from different languages, was a strong sense of grievance, for all had come to believe that while translation was becoming more important in everyone’s lives, it was still not studied systematically in universities and the training of professional translators remained at a very low level. The turning point for the group was a meeting in Leuven in 1976, when they decided to define themselves as researchers working in the new discipline henceforth to be known as translation studies. A short manifesto statement that all could subscribe to was drawn up by Andre Lefevere, and published with the proceedings of the seminar two years later as an appendix entitled ‘Translation Studies: The Goal of the Discipline’ (Lefevere, 1978).

In his opening statement, Lefevere announced that he ‘would like to propose the name “translation studies” for the discipline which concerns itself with the problems raised by the production and description of translations’ (Lefevere, 1978: 234). In making this statement, Lefevere was following James Holmes and the two men worked closely together to produce the manifesto, which proposed that the goal of the new discipline (like Holmes before him, Lefevere uses the term ‘discipline’) was ‘to produce a comprehensive theory that can also be used as a guideline for the production of translations’ (Lefevere, 1978: 234). Theory was to be developed along lines of argument that would be neither hermeneutic, that is, would not be concerned exclusively with the production of concealed meaning, nor neopositivist, in that it would require specialized and hence limited scientific knowledge about the source; such theory would also be constantly tested by case histories, so would not be static but would change and develop. Lefevere warned against what he called futile terminological squabbling, a point Holmes had also made in his 1972 essay, and advised against the coining of new terminology and the invention of untested theoretical concepts. What was seen as important was the creation of a field that would be inclusive rather than exclusive, hence the importance of finding a language that would neither put off actual translators nor create a cadre of theorists speaking only to one another in their own refined jargon. With the hindsight of several decades his final statement reads prophetically:

It is not inconceivable that a theory elaborated in this way might be of help in the formulation of literary and linguistic theory; just as it is not inconceivable that translations made according to the guidelines tentatively laid down in the theory might influence the development of the receiving culture.

(Lefevere, 1978: 235)

POLYSYSTEMS THEORY

One of the most influential papers to come out of the 1976 meeting was an essay by the Israeli systems theorist, Itamar Even-Zohar, entitled somewhat awkwardly ‘The Position of Translated Literature within the Literary Polysystem’. This essay has had considerable impact, and a great deal of historical research into translation derives in some measure from Even-Zohar’s polemical piece. In this essay, he began by noting that very little research had been carried out into what he termed ‘the major role translation has played in the crystallization of national culture’ (Even-Zohar, 2000 [1978]: 192), and that what work there was had been sporadic. He then went on to point out that translation has played a major role in shaping literatures, despite its relegation to the periphery by most literary historians. Even-Zohar challenged the marginalization of translation and proposed that far more research was needed into how texts are selected for translation, what the impact of those translations on the receiving literature might be, whether there are patterns of greater or lesser translation activity at certain times and in certain cultures, and if so why this should be the case. His colleague, Gideon Toury later expanded Even-Zohar’s ideas, in an important essay entitled ‘A Rationale for Descriptive Translation Studies’ (1985) in which he argued persuasively that research into translational phenomena should be systematic, focusing on norms and models rather than on individual case studies:

We cannot properly analyse specific translations if we do not take into account other translations belonging to the same system(s), and if we do not analyse them on various micro- and macro-structural levels. It is not at all absurd to study a single translated text or a single translator, but it is absurd to disregard the fact that this translation or this translator has positive (or negative) connections with other translations and translators.

(Toury, 1985: 51)

Both Even-Zohar and Toury were making a case for the study of translation to be embedded in a broad socio-cultural context. The tools of textual analysis deriving from Formalism with its emphasis on the literariness of literature (like the tools deriving in the Anglo-American world from New Criticism and Practical Criticism) could and should be employed within an historical framework. ‘Our object’, declared Toury, is translated literature, ‘that is to say, translational norms, models, behaviour and systems’ (Toury, 1985: 51). Toury called for international research programmes that would investigate and seek to identify broad patterns of translation activity in a given context, and would rethink the divisions between literary and non-literary translations. Throughout the 1970s, Even-Zohar and Toury were engaged in developing a theory of polysystem as a way of describing all forms of literary production. Andre Lefevere (1992a) points out that a systems approach to literary studies aims at making literary texts accessible to the reader, by means of description, analysis, historiography and translation; hence what was proposed was a more ‘scientific’ model, and one that would not make artificial distinctions between so-called ‘high’ and ‘low’ or ‘popular’ literature. All forms of writing would receive equal attention and be examined in their full cultural contexts.

In this respect, without pushing the parallels too far, although their starting points were different and there was a weakness in the systems approach in that it tended towards universalism, parallels can be seen with some of the thinking in the 1970s by Anglo-Saxon cultural studies theorists such as Raymond Williams or Stuart Hall, cultural studies practitioners who similarly, although in different ways, sought to abolish evaluative distinctions between ‘high’ and ‘low’ literature. Hence the expansion of cultural studies, as a field in its own right and as a method of studying a broad range of texts (written, visual, performative) can be seen today as having paralleled the expansion of the study of translation in the 1980s.

Even-Zohar stressed the impact of translation on the growth and development of literary systems, pointing out that on occasions, translations can be a powerful force for innovation by introducing new forms, genres and ideas. This means that translations can sometimes hold a primary position within a literature, as was the case with the Renaissance sonnet, for example, a form popularized in Italy by the poet Petrarch, that spread rapidly across a wide range of European languages as a result of translations from its original Italian and achieved canonical status in most Western literatures. However, sometimes, translations can be a major factor for conservatism, when translators are out of touch with innovatory trends in their own times and ‘adhere to norms which have been rejected either recently or long before by the (newly) established center’ (Even-Zohar, 2000 [1978]: 195). In this case the impact of such translated texts will be minimal and they will most likely be relegated to a peripheral position. He sketched out three situations in which translations might acquire a primary position: when a literature is developing, when a literature perceives itself as weak or marginal and when a literature is going through a period of crisis or is at a turning point in its development. We might see the early medieval period (from the ninth to the twelfth centuries), when vernacular languages were developing across Europe, as an example of the first situation, when on the one hand, sacred texts in Latin began to be glossed by scribes, thereby providing some of the earliest written examples of vernacular translation while, on the other hand, bards and troubadours diffused courtly love poetry across Europe in vernacular languages.

A good example of Even-Zohar’s second situation can be found in the large number of translations made into minority languages such as Finnish or Czech in the nineteenth century when the struggle for political independence was matched by the struggle to establish a national literature. The Czech scholar, Vladimir Macura has pointed out that during the Czech Revivalist movement, for example, translation ‘was not seen as a passive submission to cultural impulses from abroad’, but on the contrary was seen ‘as an active, even aggressive act, an appropriation of foreign cultural values’ (Macura 1990: 68). He cites Jan Evangelista Purkyně, a key figure in the Czech Revivalist movement, who urged his compatriots to fight against the imposition of anti-Slav linguistic and cultural policies by ‘taking possession of anything excellent they have created in the world of the mind’ (Macura, 1990: 69). Translation in such situations could, and did serve the nationalist cause and in the Czech case, led to a flow of vernacular writing that proved to be unstoppable.

Even-Zohar’s third situation can be seen in cases such as the government-led translation project that formed part of Kemal Atatürk’s Westernization strategy for Turkey in the 1920s, when there was a deliberate policy of translation as part of a nationwide education policy that sought to move the country closer to the West. It can also be observed today in the booming number of translations being made and published in China that are of strategic value in establishing and affirming its status as a major global power. However, where a literary system sees itself as being in a strong position, the need for translations is likely to diminish. This can be seen if we consider diachronic patterns of translation activity in English: the Renaissance was a period of intense translation activity which continued into the seventeenth century, but by the latter part of the eighteenth century not only was translation into English slowing down, but translation out of English was increasing right across Europe. By the end of the nineteenth century the pattern that still prevails today was established, wherein only a small percentage of books published in English were translations. When Lawrence Venuti published his history of translation, The Translator’s Invisibility in 1995, he drew attention to the huge trade imbalance in the publishing world, noting that in 1990 British and American translations amounted to less than 5 per cent of the total, compared to 25.4 per cent in Italy. Those figures have barely changed, yet a glance at the review pages of journals in smaller European countries or a walk round a bookshop shows immediately how prevalent is translation of newly published books out of English into other languages. What this indicates is a double process: the rise of English as a global language means that more texts are being produced in English that are consequently translated into other languages, while at the same time English appears more selfsufficient and so resistant to translation.

Holmes, Even-Zohar and Toury, along with José Lambert and others set out the parameters of a new approach to the study of translation, which has since then sometimes been referred to as ‘the polysystems approach’, sometimes as ‘descriptive translation studies’, and, since Toury’s paper appeared in a collection edited by Theo Hermans in 1985 entitled The Manipulation of Literature, as ‘the Manipulation school’. What all advocated was a more systematic enquiry into translation, both in terms of the fortunes of translations in the receiving literature, and in terms of the strategies employed by different translators at different times. However, initial response to the embryonic field of translation studies was not particularly promising: linguists remained on the whole wedded to exploring relative concepts of equivalence, translations continued to be seen as outside the generally accepted literary canons and the Leuven group were criticized for shifting the emphasis onto the target culture to the detriment of the textual source. But what the new approach succeeded in doing was to position the study of translation within the study of culture more broadly, highlighting political and socio-economic factors, while continuing to insist on the importance of close textual analysis; in short, creating an approach to translation that was as much concerned with ideology as with philosophical debates about meaning. The Leuven group were all opposed to what they saw as sterile debates about definitions of ‘faithfulness’ and exact equivalence, subscribing to Holmes’ blunt, common-sense statement about intellectual and creative diversity:

Put five translators onto rendering even a syntactically straight-forward, metrically unbound, magically simple poem like Carl Sandberg’s ‘Fog’ into, say Dutch. The chances that any two of the five translations will be identical are very slight indeed. Then set twenty-five other translators into turning the five Dutch versions back into English, five translators to a version. Again the result will almost certainly be as many renderings as there are translators. To call this equivalence is perverse.

(Holmes, 1988a: 53)

Edwin Gentzler has charted the emergence of the line of translation studies known as the polysystems approach that derived from the Leuven meetings in his book, Contemporary Translation Theories, first published in 1992 and revised in 2001. He notes the links between polysystems theory, as elaborated by Even-Zohar, and Russian Formalism, and he is critical of what he sees as a tendency to overgeneralize in an attempt to establish universal laws of literary transmission. Gentzler finds Even-Zohar’s complex model of cultural systems too reliant on Formalist concepts such as ‘literariness’, but despite his criticisms, he nevertheless acknowledges Even-Zohar’s pioneering work:

By expanding the theoretical boundaries of traditional translation theory, based all too frequently on linguistic models or undeveloped literary theories, and embedding translated literature into a larger cultural context, Even-Zohar opened the way for translation theory to advance beyond prescriptive aesthetics.

(Gentzler, 2001: 123)

CHALLENGING ORTHODOXIES

It is important to remember that attempts to found a new discipline called translation studies were happening in parallel with other critical endeavours in the humanities more generally. The student protests in Europe and North America in the late 1960s and the expansion of higher education in general that began during that time led to substantial rethinking of university curricula. New fields of study began to emerge that reflected social changes: sociology, cultural studies, film and media studies and theatre studies all began gradually to acquire academic status and respectability, disturbing and often displacing traditional singlesubject boundaries. Indeed, the term ‘studies’ came to be used increasingly where once the words ‘language and literature’ might have been employed, a further indication of the shift towards interdisciplinary thinking. But to understand how translation studies came to grow so exponentially in the 1980s and expand globally in the 1990s, the question needs to be posed as to why the Leuven gatherings produced ideas that were so significantly differen...