new approaches to translation history anthony pym intercultural studies group universitat rovira i...
TRANSCRIPT
New Approaches to Translation History
Anthony Pym
Intercultural Studies Group
Universitat Rovira i Virgili
Tarragona, Spain
Menu for morning session:
Why do it? Quantitative research? Systems and norms? Intercultures?
Why do translation history?
Personal satisfaction – So why communicate it?
Protection and glory of target cultures– So why look at translation?
To challenge concepts of cultures? – But there is nothing outside of cultures?
A traditional theory:
W h at tran s la tion is
S O U R C E C U L TU R ES O U R C E TE X T
S O U R C E M E A N IN G
TA R G E T C U L TU R ETA R G E T TE X T
TA R G E T M E A N IN G
What’s missing?
Cross-cultural intertextuality Overlaps of cultures Positions for receivers (how many
meanings?) Positions for translators...
An alternative model:
Culture 1 Culture 2Tr
An even better alternative model:
Culture 1 Culture 2TrLocale 1 Locale 2
Locale 3
IC
Locale 4
What is different here?
Translation moves out from a common centre (an interculture)
It moves towards locales There are no target texts in the interculture
What is an interculture?
Relations are professional They have secondness with respect to
monocultural communication The agents become principles (?) They become more independent the more
technical their tasks are. (They will one day rule the world?)
Where are cultures?
Where are intercultures?
Which means...
Translators work in networks (of intermediaries).
Translations mark the limits of cultures The communication borders are nodes,
increasingly in cities. Translation precedes cultural identity.
Measuring translation flows 1
0
10000
20000
30000
40000
50000
60000
1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990
Books
Translations
Measuring translation flows 2
0
5
10
15
20
TRAN
SLAT
ION
S FR
OM
LAN
GU
AGE
(IN T
HO
USA
ND
S)
0 50 100 150 200BOOKS PUBLISHED IN LANGUAGE (IN THOUSANDS)
FIG. 1. BOOKS TRANSLATED FROM LANGUAGEBY BOOKS PUBLISHED IN LANGUAGE
UNESCO DATA FOR 1979-1983
English
FrenchRussian
German
SpanishJapanese
Measuring translation flows 3
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
0
PER
CEN
TAG
E O
F TR
ANSL
ATIO
NS
IN L
ANGU
AGE
50 100 150 200
BOOKS PUBLISHED (IN THOUSANDS)
FIG. 2a. PERCENTAGES OF TRANSLATIONSBY BOOKS PUBLISHED IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES
UNESCO DATA FOR 1979-1983
English
Spanish
Russian
Japanese
GermanFrench
Portuguese
Finnish, ArabicHebrew
Polish
Italian
Dutch
Danish, NorwegianAlbanian
Hungarian
Slovak
Turkish
Measuring translation flows 4
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
0
% B
OOKS
PUB
LISHE
D IN
NON
-NAT
IONA
L LAN
GUAG
ES
5 10 15 20 25
% TRANSLATIONS IN ALL BOOKS PUBLISHED
FIG. 3. PERCENTAGE OF TRANSLATIONSBY PERCENTAGE OF BOOKS PUBLISHED IN NON-NATIONAL LANGUAGES
UNESCO DATA FOR 1979-1983
30
Albania
Finland
Japan
Arabic-speaking countries
DenmarkNorway
Israel
Netherlands Sweden
TurkeySpanish-speaking countries
Italy Slovakia
Hungary
BrazilUSSRPoland
Which means:
The more cultural products there are in a language, the more translations there are likely to be from that language.
A low translation percentage in a language may be due to no more than a relatively high number of cultural products produced in that language
And...
The more cultural products a country produces in non-national languages, the higher the percentage of translations into the national language(s) is likely to be.
(e.g. People in Sweden read in English AND read translations from English)
Thus...
This is why intercultures appear to be central or peripheral, in accordance with the relative size and openness of the cultural locale concerned.
So how can we read this?
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
1840 1860 1880 1900 1920 1940
German to French
French to German
British to German
Is English-language culture hegemonic? For 1960-1986 there were more than 2.5
times as many translations in Britain and the United States (1,872,050) than in France (688,720) or Italy (577,950).
24% of all books in English are published outside the US or the UK.
What are norms?
‘The main factors ensuring the establishment and retention of social order’ (Toury 1995:55).
For example... Literal / free, longer / shorter, neologisms /
archaisms, preface / none, notes / none.
How to discover norms?
Look at translations? Compare translations with parallel texts? Look at translation theories? Look at translation criticism? Look at debates between translators? I.e. Bottom-up or top-down.
For example:
'no great novel has ever been rendered into French without cuts' (Wyzewa 1901: 599).
M. G. Conrad (1889) proposed that German translators make more cuts as an act of adaptive protectionism against the disloyal cultural competition of French translators.
Toury’s laws:
The textual relations of the original are increasingly ignored in favour of the options offered by the target language.
Interference happens when the translation is from a prestigious language or culture and the target language or culture is minor.
In human terms...?
The more the translator is in an interculture, the less “natural” the translation.
The bigger the receiving culture, the more marginal the interculture and the more “natural” the translation.
... Perhaps...
Examples:
Twelfth-century translations into Latin were...
...extremely literal. Nineteenth-century translations into French
were... ...often very free...
But what of the power of the individual? Rabbi Mose... Henri Albert... Ezra Pound
... Or their patrons?
The real question is:
Who makes history?
(Or are the norms and systems simply there?)
Activity
Select a translator (or group of translators) Try to find out how they made their money. Who did they work with / for /against? What was the locale conditioning their
work? Can you locate any norms of that locale?