Translation: A Multidisciplinary Approach

J. House

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781137025463
• eBook ISBN: 9781137025487
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Historical & Comparative Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The cross-linguistic and cross-cultural practice of translation is a field of rapidly growing international importance. World-renowned experts offer new and multidisciplinary insights on this subject, viewing translation as social action and intercultural communication, and as a phenomenon of languages in contact and a socio-cognitive process.

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Introduction

Juliane House

In this introduction I will firstly try to address the basic question of what translation is, look at several crucial concepts and trends in translation studies and the increasingly important role which translation plays today in different domains of practice. Secondly I will provide a brief introduction to the chapters in this volume.

1.1 What is translation?

Translation can be defined as the result of a linguistic-textual operation in which a text in one language is re-produced in another language. However, this linguistic-textual operation is subject to, and substantially influenced by, a variety of different extra-linguistic factors and conditions. It is this interaction between ‘inner’ linguistic-textual and ‘outer’ extra-linguistic contextual factors that makes translation such a complex phenomenon. Some of these factors are:

• the structural characteristics;
• the expressive potential and the constraints of the two languages involved in translation;
• the extra-linguistic world which is differentially ‘cut up’ by source and target languages;
• the source text with its linguistic-stylistic-aesthetic features that belong to the norms of usage holding in the source lingua-cultural community;
• the linguistic-stylistic-aesthetic norms of the target language;
• the target language norms internalised by the translator;
• intertextuality governing the totality of the text in the target culture;
• traditions, principles, histories, ideologies of translation holding in the target lingua-cultural community;
• the translational ‘brief’ given to the translator by the person/institution commissioning the translation;
• the translator’s workplace conditions;
• human factors: knowledge, expertise, ethical stance and attitudinal profiles of the receptors of the translation as well as knowledge, expertise, ethical stance, attitudinal profiles of the translator as well as his/her subjective theories of translation.

So while translation is at its core a linguistic-textual operation, a multitude of other conditioning and constraining factors also impinge on its performance. As the different perspectives and approaches united in this multidisciplinary volume nicely show, the complexity of both translation and the field of translation studies results from the fact that each of the factors listed above – and possibly many more – can be taken singly or in multiple combinations as a starting point for investigating translation. So we find in this volume approaches that focus on literature in translation, discourse and cross-cultural communication, language contact, socio-political, cognitive, narrative and pedagogic perspectives on translation, corpora, media, assessment. It is this enormous breadth, depth and richness of translation which makes it such a fascinating multidisciplinary field.

However, despite the multiple conditioning of translation, one may still, as a common core, retain the minimal definition of translation as a replacement of an original text in one language with a text in another language. Seen more negatively, one might say that a translated text is in principle ‘second-best’, that is, a kind of inferior substitute for the ‘real thing’. On this view, translation is by definition a secondary act of communication. Normally, communicative events happen only once. In translation, communicative events are reduplicated for persons or groups otherwise prevented from appreciating the original communicative event. More positively, however, translation can be seen as enabling access to a different world of knowledge, traditions and ideas that would otherwise have been locked away behind a language barrier. From this perspective, translation has often been described as a builder of bridges, an extender of horizons providing its recipients with an important service enabling them to go beyond the borders of the world staked out by their own language. As Ludwig Wittgenstein famously remarked: ‘Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt’ (the limits of my language mean the limits of my world). It is through translation that lingua-cultural barriers can be overcome, translation being one of the most important mediators between societies and cultures in which different languages are spoken.

Translation gives readers access to a message which already exists. This ‘derived nature’ of translation also means that in translation there is always both an orientation backwards to the existing previous message of the original text and an orientation forwards towards how texts in a corresponding genre are composed in the target language. This type of ‘double-bind’ relationship is a basic feature of translation.

1.2 Translation as intercultural communication

Translation is not only a linguistic act, it is also an act of communication across cultures. In fact, translation is one of the major means of constructing representations of other cultures. Translation always involves both different languages and different cultures simply because the two cannot be separated. Language is culturally embedded: it serves to express and shape cultural reality, and the meanings of linguistic units can only be understood when considered together with the cultural contexts in which they are used. In translation, therefore, not only two languages but also two cultures come into contact. In this sense, then, translation is a form of intercultural communication. Over and above recognising the importance of the two larger cultural frameworks, however, the translator must also consider the more immediate ‘context of situation’. This more local situational context has to do with questions concerning who wrote the text, when, why, for whom and who is now reading it, for what purpose etc. These different questions in turn are reflected in how the text is written, interpreted and read. The context of situation is itself embedded in the larger sociocultural world as it is depicted in the text and in the real world.

If we regard translation as a form of intercultural communication between members of different lingua-cultural groups with their often diverging knowledge sets, values, histories, traditions, legal systems, attitudes, social and regional backgrounds, we need to briefly look at the main research traditions in the field of intercultural communication. In what one may call ‘the old thinking about intercultural communication’, we find essentialist generalisations linking ‘culture’ with races, nations, states, regions, serving to propagate cultural stereotypes, mentalities and ‘national characters’. The roots of this line of thinking can be found in colonisation, trade, diplomacy, military invasions or so-called ‘peace research’ as well as other domains where ‘the other’ needed to be understood if only to enable easier routes of domination. Intercultural communication in these contexts is both simplified and instrumentalised for the expansion of neo-liberal capitalism, tourism, military ‘humanitarian’ intervention in the name of progress, peace, security, aid and ‘understanding’. The literature in this tradition is vast and extremely popular (cf. e.g. Hall 1976; Hofstede 1980; Thomas 2003). While real sociocultural diversity and superdiversity, complexity, hybridity and individuality are largely ignored in this literature, the ‘new thinking about intercultural communication’ takes account of this complexity and regards culture as diversified, dynamic, fluid, hybrid, constructed and emergent, and recognises that boundaries in the globalised world are increasingly blurred and negotiable, and ‘cultures’ are interconnected in multiple interactions and exchanges. (cf. e.g. Blommaert 2005, 2010; Piller 2011). Notions such as ‘small cultures’ (Holliday 1999; 2013) and ‘Community of Practice’ (Wenger 1998) have come to be seen as more useful than that of a monolithic ‘culture’, with intercultural communication being regarded today more often than not as social practice in motion. Questions about the influence of ‘culture’ on individuals and groups and on translation need to be found as responses to questions concerning, for example, who makes culture relevant to whom, for which purpose where and in which context. Such responses also help in assessing intercultural understanding, an important prerequisite for evaluating translations. In studies on intercultural understanding in the past we find a focus on failure, ‘culture shock’, ‘clashes of civilization’ or misunderstanding (cf. Coupland et al. 1991; Agar 1994; Huntingdon 1997; House et al. 2003). More recently, however, alongside the new thinking on intercultural communication, we can find a shift towards examining how intercultural understanding is managed in certain communities of practice (Bührig et al. 2009; House 2012).

Intercultural understanding is also the basis of a crucial concept in translation: that of functional equivalence. Functional equivalence is a condition for intercultural understanding defined as the success with which intercultural communication is made to function through the provision of ‘common ground’ (Clark 1996). The link between functional equivalence (as a conceptual basis of translation) and intercultural understanding (as a basis of intercultural communication) is highlighted in functional pragmatics via the concept of the ‘dilated speech situation’ (die zerdehnte Sprechsituation, cf. Ehlich 1984). The notion of the dilated speech situation is crucial for viewing translation as a type of written communication through texts. Texts are agents of the transmission of messages from writers to readers who are not at the same place at the same time. Through such a transmission by a text, the original speech situation becomes ‘dilated’. In translation, however, a rupture occurs due to the linguistic-cultural barrier between author and reader. This rupture may be repaired through translational action. It is this rupture-repairing by the translator which makes translation necessarily a highly reflective and cognitively demanding action.

1.3 Translation as social action in context

The inherently reflective nature of translational action reveals itself in a translator’s focus on the situatedness of a text, and his/her recognition of the interconnectedness of text and context. As texts travel across time, space and different orders of indexicality in translation, they must be re-contextualised. Exploring text in context is thus the only way of exploring text for the purposes of translation as re-contextualisation (House 2006).

Recently, such re-contextualisation in translation has involved contexts characterised by radically unequal power relations between individuals, groups, languages and literatures. Translators are here asked to play an important role in questioning and/or resisting existing power structures (Baker and Perez-Gonzalez 2011: 44). In these contexts, translation does not function only as an action to mediate and resolve conflict but rather as a space where tensions are signalled and power struggles are played out. An extreme case of such tensions is the positioning of translators in zones of war. In such a context, translation scholars have looked at the impact the performance of translators has had on the different parties in a war zone, whether and how translators align themselves with their employers or refuse to do so, and how personally involved they become in situations of conflict and violence (cf. Baker 2006; Maier 2007; Inghilleri 2009). One of the recent disciplines used to demonstrate discursive negotiations of competing narratives of war and conflict through translational acts is narrative theory (Baker 2006).

In the wake of rapid technological advances and the need to spread information quickly and efficiently through instant mediation, translation has substantially grown in importance in the globalised, de-territorialised space. While this trend is certainly financially advantageous for the translating profession, there has also been criticism of the instantaneous flow of information, and its reliance on English in its role of a global lingua franca in many influential domains of contemporary life. The impact of English as a lingua franca has recently been investigated in corpus-based investigation of translation as a site of language context in a globalised world (cf. Kranich et al. 2012; House 2013b).

Corpora have been an important methodological tool in translation studies for a number of years, facilitating detailed analyses of patterns of translation shifts and changes, and enabling translation scholars to compare vast numbers of translations with originals in the two languages involved (cf. e.g. Kruger et al. 2011).

New information and communication technologies in a globalised world play an increasingly important role in enabling a novel participatory culture where professional and ad hoc lay translators engage in the production of free translations for widespread public consumption. Several activist translator sites such as Indymedia or Tlaxcala are now challenging the established global news agencies with their grass-root reporting and volunteer translating, giving rise to a new culture of participatory collaborative translation. The impact of new media cultures and new practices on translation and the necessity to take into account complex new audiences is one of the foremost challenges in the field of translation studies today.

Another recent development in translation studies is the concern with questions of ethics in translation. (cf. e.g. Goodwin 2010; Baker and Maier 2011). This concern goes hand in hand with the increased visibility of translators through their involvement in violent conflicts and various, activist, translator groups, activist centres and sites and the concomitant broader awareness of translators’ role in making transparent human rights issues and the suppression of minorities.

1.4 Translation as a cognitive process

Apart from the social contextual approach to translation, there is another important trend which looks at translation as a cognitive process. Cognitive aspects of translation and the process of translation in the translator’s mind have been investigated for over 30 years with a recent upsurge of interest (cf. O’Brien 2011; Shreve and Angelone 2011; Ehrensberger-Dow et al. 2013). This increase in interest about ‘what goes on in translators’ heads’ owes much to the availability of modern instruments and methods for the empirical investigation of particular aspects of a translator’s performance such as keystroke logging, eye-tracking or screen recording as well as various neuro-psychological techniques. As O’Brien (2013: 6) has pointed out, translation process research has heavily ‘borrowed’ from a number of disciplines: linguistics, psychology, cognitive science, neuro-science, reading and writing research and language technology. The influence of these disciplines and their particular research directions and methodologies on translation studies is at the present time something of a one-way affair, but given time, a reciprocal interdiscipl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Translation and Equivalence
• 3 Discourse and Translation – A Social Perspective
• 4 Chinese Discourse on Translation as Intercultural Communication: The Story of jihe (幾何)
• 5 Cross-Cultural Pragmatics and Translation: The Case of Museum Texts as Interlingual Representation
• 6 Translations as a Locus of Language Contact
• 7 Reorienting Translation Studies: Cognitive Approaches and the Centrality of the Translator
• 8 Literary Translation
• 9 Translation as Re-narration
• 10 Corpora in Translation
• 11 Translation and New(s) Media: Participatory Subtitling Practices in Networked Mediascapes
• 12 The Role of Translation in Language Learning and Teaching
• 13 Translation Quality Assessment: Past and Present
• Index