Power and Ideology in South African Translation

A Social Systems Perspective

Maricel Botha

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9783030610623
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030610630
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book provides a social interpretation of written South African translation history from the seventeenth century to the present, considering how trends involving various languages have reflected ideologies and unequal power relations and focusing attention on translation's often hidden social operation. Translation is investigated in relation to colonial mercantilism, scientific knowledge of extraction, Christian missionary conversion, Islamic education, various nationalisms, apartheid oppression and the anti-apartheid struggle, neoliberalism, exclusion and post-apartheid social transformation by employing Niklas Luhmann's social systems theory. This book will be an essential resource for scholars, graduate students, and general readers who are interested in or work on the history and practice of translation and its cultural agents in the South African context. 

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

M. BothaPower and Ideology in South African TranslationTranslation Historyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61063-0_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Maricel Botha¹

(1)

Centre for Academic and Professional Language Practice, North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa

1.1 Translation Sociology

1.2 Power and Ideology

1.3 Translation History

1.4 Social Systems Theory

References

Keywords

Translation sociologyPowerIdeologyHistorySocial systems theory

End Abstract

Of all the types of communication that constantly frame and re-frame conceptions of the world and shape or reflect societal power dynamics, interlingual translation is one whose contribution seems comparatively insignificant. Political discourse, mass media and literature, for example, though subject to certain constraints, appear to possess a rather vociferous potential for communicative assertion and leave obvious opportunities for the construction and propagation of world views and the reflection of various ideologies. By contrast, the unassuming act of translation, shrouded in a guise of functionalism and constrained by a comparatively stringent requirement to conform, seems to allow little room for a socially reflective or socially influential function. Yet this assumption is far from accurate and social analyses of translation have uncovered very direct and influential relations between translation and matters such as power and ideology. Maria Tymoczko (2010: 1–2) explains translation’s socially reflective potential as follows:

The translation record between languages and cultures is a particularly rich source of information about cultural transfer both synchronically and diachronically, illuminating, for example, the shape of the literary systems involved, reception conditions, patronage effects, power relations between cultures, and so forth. Moreover, when translation occurs within a complex, multilingual cultural system […] translations reveal much of interest about cultural stratification, competing values within a culture, literary prestige, and the like.

This explanation ties in closely with the following much earlier remarks by Román Álvarez and Maria Carmen África Vidal (1996: 3):

As it is approached today, translation tackles some of the most important cultural problems: the death of what Lyotard has called the “Grand Récits”; the consequences of colonisation in the interpretation of other cultures; the problems springing from the rebirth of xenophobia and racism; the understanding of the exotic […]. [Translation] can also become a form of control […].

South African society can certainly be considered a complex, multilingual cultural system and the phenomena mentioned by Tymoczko in this regard not only apply to, but are highly relevant to the South African context. South Africa has a notorious association with complex racial and cultural dynamics and oppression on these grounds, which, though by no means uncommon in world history, are particularly marked in this case due to their severity and recentness. In this context, language has played an important role in establishing cultural dominance, exercising control and even resisting cultural oppression in ways that have not been fully appreciated. This is even truer of the specific role of translation. In response to this lack, this book seeks to uncover the covert role of written translation practices in social power dynamics throughout South African history.

Although the scope is limited to the country currently known as the Republic of South Africa, the investigation is broad both in time and cultural range in an attempt to provide a history of written translation for as long as a written tradition has existed in South Africa and covering as many languages and cultures as have contributed to this history. The limitation of the scope to written translation was a practical choice. Desiring to account for translation occurring over a long stretch of time and involving many languages made the feasibility of adequately investigating both written translation practices and interpreting practices questionable within the constraints of the research project from which this publication originates. The choice for written translation stemmed quite simply from the greater availability of data on these practices, making it the natural place to initiate what can be considered the most encompassing account of South African translation history as yet. This does not imply that interpreting practices are less important and historical investigation of these would be very valuable, especially given the tradition of orality which characterises African cultures.

In order to uncover translation’s social role, sociological and historical perspectives are combined in this book. A fecund relationship results from this combination, since history and sociology both serve to contextualise translation in complementary ways. Translation sociology and a stronger interest in translation history in fact share a common genesis, having developed simultaneously as a result of the Polysystem Theory and Descriptive Translation Studies (see Gürçağlar 2013: 136; Wolf 2007: 6). In a chapter called “Between Sociology and History: Method in Context and in Practice” (2007), Daniel Simeoni explains that both sociology and history have more recently undergone methodological changes and traditional oppositions are no longer as apparent, paving the way to a less divergent (and in fact a productive and harmonious) relationship. Simeoni (2007: 193) states that “with so many disciplinary initiatives overlapping, there is a sense that we may soon be heading towards a new global historical social science, where the more sociologically-oriented translation studies may want to find its place”.

Translation sociology is able to complement translation history by providing interpretive mechanisms, aligning historical research with the theoretical and practical motivations of translation studies or other disciplines. Due to its interpretive worth, it is not surprising that the editors of this Translation History series made specific mention of sociological approaches in their call for contributions. Translation history, on the other hand, obviously complements translation sociology by broadening its temporal scope in the interest of comparison and the tracing of social development and change. Historical investigations contribute viewpoints from contexts which may differ significantly enough from the present day to broaden our understanding of social phenomena by pointing out trends and behaviours which would not have been conceived or realised within the present environment. Or they point to phenomena which are similar enough to the present to be practically and theoretically educative. Moreover, both fields are able to contribute conceptually and methodologically to the understanding of translation. In this book, this is truer of sociology than of history, since the purpose of the research is social interpretation rather than historiography and the sociological framework employed therefore assumes a strong directive function. This is not to say that history cannot contribute conceptually and methodologically in more analytical or interpretive research, but the contribution of sociology is stronger in this regard. This research can therefore be considered diachronically sociological rather than historiographical, but it is historical nonetheless and certainly ties in with the purpose of this series to provide a global and interdisciplinary view of translation and translators across time, place and cultures.

In the remainder of this introduction, translation sociology, power and ideology, translation history and Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory, all of which direct the findings in this book and serve to situate the research theoretically, are introduced.

1.1 Translation Sociology

A greater emphasis on translation’s location between cultures and societies and its operation amid complex social and political relations was one of the results of the cultural turn in translation studies. This led to the development around the beginning of the twentieth century of a branch of translation studies called translation sociology, whose introduction has also been viewed as a “turn”: the social or sociological turn (Rizzi et al. 2019: 3). Translation sociology views translation activities within social contexts ranging from comparatively small entities such as organisations and communities to larger constructs, including entire cultures, literary systems and societies. Thus, it allows not only social contextualisation, but also macrocontextualisation of translation. The assumption of an elevated vantage point is able to reveal unequal power dynamics and various types of social conditioning which are sometimes hidden when translated texts are viewed in closer proximity. In this regard, macrocontextualisation, the perspective promoted by Sergey Tyulenev (2014), is particularly significant as it may unveil more far-reaching and often more consequential power constellations. Although sociological research in translation may assume different degrees of proximity to translational subjects (products, processes, agents, etc.), it necessitates a relational view which recognises a degree of social interconnection regardless of its scale in order to be truly sociological.

In the article “Translation as a social fact” (2014), Sergey Tyulenev proposes Durkheim’s concept of social fact as a guideline for delimiting the ambit of translation sociology. In attempting to determine what it is that makes the social social, Tyulenev explains, Durkheim concluded that while individuals do influence social constraints, it takes more than one individual to do so, elevating that action beyond the individual plane to the social plane. Collectiveness thus underlies sociality. Furthermore, this collectiveness is something quite different from a conglomerate psychology. Durkheim explains social facts as “ways of acting or thinking, recognisable by the distinguishing characteristic that they are capable of exercising a coercive influence over individual consciousness” (quoted in Tyulenev 2014: 189). Tyulenev (2014: 181) explains that social facts are thus external to individuals and that “entrenched, collective action and thought constrain the individual, who can do little to eliminate or change these established conventions”. Established conventions can, however, be changed by a collective effort, but the resulting “synthesis of wills”, is once again something that exists beyond and separately from individual psychology (ibid.).

This observation has the methodological implication that sociology should study trends (typicality versus a-typicality), generalisations and common social patterns (Tyulenev 2014: 186–187). Tyulenev (2014: 183) admits that translation as a social activity cannot exist apart from individual translation acts, but maintains that sociological translation should be studied not in relation to a sum of individuals, but as a system formed by the interaction of individuals, displaying its own features. Therefore, when individual translators or translations are studied in sociological research, individual reasons for translations should not be studied, but rather the larger context and general conditions that determine translational actions.

Tying in with this description of sociology, Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory (henceforth SST), which provides the theoretical structure in the current investigation, provides an elaborate description of the systems according to which these constraining factors may be conceptualised. Luhmann shares Durkheim’s acknowledgement of the disempowerment of the individual in the description of the social and takes a distinctly non-humanistic approach in which humans are removed from the description of society altogether and are placed within the social environment. In his approach, social phenomena are “animated” or described as possessing a “life” of their own through their partly biologically inspired description as self-recreating systems. This is simply mentioned to indicate the correspondence between this particular theory and the description of sociology just provided and more concerning SST follows shortly.

1.2 Power and Ideology

Power and ideology are two concepts that have been foregrounded within the sociological turn (Wolf 2007: 12), and they govern and direct the analyses in this book due to their useful distillation of the social relevance of translation. In other words, if we consider why, how and with what effect tran...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Social Systems Theory—Fundamentals and Application
• 3. Commencement—Knowledge Exportation
• 4. Advent—Complex Conversion
• 5. Establishment—Nationalist Incentive
• 6. Peak—Oppression and Resistance
• 7. Recession—Transformation?
• 8. Conclusion
• Back Matter