Stefano Arduini 1

 Translation  

Stefano  Arduini    In the last few decades, translation has become a key research area in communication studies.

There are many reasons for this and it is not easy to identify a hierarchy. I think that one of the

reasons is that translation reminds us of the fragility of the instruments we use to build our

individual and collective identity. We feel Italian or German or French because we share inside our

group some cultural conventions among which stand out language or languages we learned when

we were children. Language constitutes, and at the same time represents, the framework of values

which we feel as our home. Language therefore is probably the most powerful identity-forming

instrument. It permits us to know who we are marking out a boundary between us and the others

who speak, have a behavior and think differently from us. It is also likely that the common

denominator is that intercultural relationships have become one of the most urgent problems of our

time. As a matter of fact, translating involves all of the main elements through which a culture sees

and represents itself, as well as the way it represents and communicates with other cultures. In

essence, translation concerns our relationship with others and the way in which a culture creates its

own identity (see Gambier, 1994), in a process that involves diversity, similarity and the attempt to

create a connection between our culture and those of others. Not only has translation garnered

interest from a cultural and communicative perspective, but recently there has also been a lot of

attention in the fields of linguistics, semiotics and argumentation. This is because the questions we

ask about translation are the same we ask ourselves about the production and interpretation of texts.

However, translation is an activity which is carried out under special conditions and better exposes

what normally happens in non-translated communication. For this reason, if on the one hand

translation forces us to bring into question many of the categories that have been established by

modern linguistics and semiotics, on the other it allows us to verify how different linguistic levels

interact with and influence each other in practice. Therefore, translation presupposes an integrated

model in which no semiotic-textual aspect is excluded.

The main aspects our research has focused on revolve around these premises and have helped

to define some key points. First of all, translation is about texts, and therefore these are complex

cultural products. Secondly, translation is a form of rewriting which involves textual production

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starting from another text, in a way similar to paraphrase, parody or summary. Because translation

is rewriting, translation changes the original text, applying a sort of "manipulation", to use a term

introduced in this field by André Lefevere. It is a manipulation which is linked to the expectations

and requests of the target culture, which in certain cases, can be modified. It is also a manipulation

in the sense that we translate texts departing from certain premises for certain purposes. Premises

and purposes build translators' attitude, influence their translation style and are influenced by

dominant ideologies. All of this tells us that translation is not just the transfer of meaning from one

language to another which remains unchanged. During the transfer, meaning is subjected to some

kind of cognitive transformations.

Translating texts

The beginning of the Seventies in Linguistics meant the passage from sentence to text analysis

and this had consequences also in translation.

From this perspective we can consider the work of Katharina Reiss (1976), who tried with the

Skopostheorie to build a typological framework used to evaluate translation. These ideas have been

stressed in a later work written in collaboration with Hans J. Vermeer (Reiss–Vermeer 1984), in

which the two authors assert that between source text and target text it is necessary to find a sort of

inter-textual coherence which is the real translation fidelity. What is characteristic of this position is

that the concept of equivalence concerns texts and is intended as a concept that has different levels.

So, more than to try to find an equivalence that is difficult to define, it is important to conceive

translation as an attempt to put into dialogue two texts by identifying functions and text types.

The contributions of German academics Reiß and Vermeer and, more in general, of the

German functionalist school of thought, are the basis of Nord's functionalism theory, which comes

from an attempt to bring together two positions which were contemplated in those years. Nord's

functionalist theory was born in a "crossfire", so to say: if, on the one hand, the supporters of the

Skopostheorie places the skopos of translation at the forefront (the function of the TA in its social

and cultural context), on the other, those who opposed this theory continued to stress the importance

of faithfulness of the source (Cinato Kather, Lucia [2011:19]). Nord on the one hand welcomes

Reiss and Vermeer's Skopostheorie, acknowledging the importance of the role of the TA in the

translation process; on the other, she enriches the Skopostheorie with the principle of "loyalty" to

the TP, highlighting importance to the original text and the functions performed by it. The

combination of these two elements leads to the two pivotal points of her theory,

Funktionsgerechtigkeit + Loyalität (function + loyalty), a principle which highlights the dual

responsibility of the translator towards the producer of the TP and the receiver of the TA.

“[…] in our culture, translation requires not only functionality of the target text but also

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loyalty towards the ST sender and his intention (which is a costitutive factor of ST function), […] only by analysing the ST function […]the translator can decide which TT function(s) will be compatible with the given ST” (Nord [1991:72])

Rewriting and Manipulation

To translate is a matter of texts, but what happens when we translate texts?

As Skopostheorie has shown, translating means to adopt strategies that are from time to time

different in relation to the readers and the context of reception. This induced André Lefevere (1981)

to speak explicitly of translation as manipulation and rewriting. To translate is to manipulate and

rewrite because translation has a lot of things in common with other kinds of interpretation and

textual production, as historiography, literary criticism, and editing. All these activities, in fact,

have the goal of building an image of a text, of an author or of an entire literary culture and to

project them in a different reception environment. The history of translation, and for example the

history of Bible translation, is precisely the history of a community in relation to others. In this

sense, to rewrite is to rethink a text in relation to its own cultural coordinates.

In regard to this, it is important to see how the perception of literary property or even the very

notion of faithfulness in translation have developed in time. It has been observed that this notion has

changed significantly throughout the course of history, in that a translation deemed faithful in a

certain period is considered to be unfaithful in another. Another concept of great interest connected

with this framework is the concept of patronage (Lefevere 1985) that is to say that the individuals,

groups and institutions which influence, encourage but also censor rewriting in the literary sphere.

Aspects such as these are very important because they enable us to understand that translation is

never an innocent activity and that it depends strongly on the social and political context in which it

takes place.

Translation  and  Culture  

Translation changes cultures: what does this mean? And what culture are?

Here In order to give an answer to this question, it is necessary to consider that cultures are

extremely unstable.

Cultures (Bhabha 1994) are the result of exchanges, overlapping, reevaluations, the

continuous transfer of meaning and, consequently, of translations. In fact, culture is the

consequence of these continuous translations.

At the beginning of The Persians, the Chorus lists the commanders who had followed King

Xerxes and the towns which make up the empire: “all the power has left Asia with him”. Eschilus

illustrates the concept of multiplicity as a feature of Persian identity. The Persian Empire is made up

of different folks, races, languages, religions - diversity is its trademark. In stark contrast to Persian

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identity is Greek identity: the Persians are a assorted group, an ensemble of languages, traditions

and cultures, while the Greeks are a unit, they consider themselves to be outside the Asian

continuum, they are a discreet entity which exalts certain cultural traits and excludes others. Many

Greeks identify themselves as belonging to one side and to one identity creating a cultural

diasystem. It is a form of self-representation which questions a narration. The Greeks find

themselves and identify themselves in the narration of the combat against the only universal empire

of that era.

This example is useful to understand that, as written by Stuart Hall (2002), cultures are the

result of many discourses and diverse and opposing social practices.

To understand the role of translation in this context and how it changes cultures, we must

remember what Antoine Berman (1984; 1999) said when talking about ethnocentrism in translation.

“Ethnocentric” is the approach according to which a culture tends to interpret a connection

with other cultures by placing its own at the center and seeing the foreign culture as being

something to refuse or to adapt and camouflage within the target culture. An ethnocentric approach

inevitably leads to a position in translation which is “Hypertextual”.

Ethnocentrism in translation first appeared in the Latin works of Cicero. Berman stresses that

for Cicero translation is essentially grasping an ORIGINAL meaning which goes beyond the form.

As it is meant to grasp the ORIGINAL meaning, translation is suspicious of words and favors the

Platonic caesura between spirit and body.

This Platonic inheritance will be passed on to the Western world and will become canonical in

translation. If the objective of translating is to grasp the ORIGINAL meaning, we must necessarily

detach ourselves from the body of the text; faithfulness to the meaning cannot be faithfulness to the

words (which aren’t ORIGINAL) in the same way faithfulness to the spirit cannot be faithfulness to

the body.

But Berman realized that faithfulness to the original and unfaithfulness to the foreign language

is, nevertheless, faithfulness to one’s own language, the receiver of the translation. The ORIGINAL

meaning is grasped in one language and this is the receiving language and therefore it is deprived of

everything that cannot be transferred into it. According to Berman, the pre-eminence of meaning is

inevitably expansionist. Meaning cannot be released into a pure language and therefore the ideology

of the pre-eminence of the ORIGINAL text becomes the ideology of the language into which the

text has been translated.

Such an ideology gives language the status of a semiotic means which is privileged and

untouchable. Meaning should enter the language without doing any damage. According to this

stance, foreign works should be translated in a way in which translation is not “perceived”; the

product has to give the impression that it is what the writer would have written had he/she been

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writing directly in the translated language. Berman stressed how this desire leads to certain

“deforming tendencies” underlying translation ideology in the Western world.

Such deforming tendencies are: rationalization, clarification, expansion, ennoblement

vulgarization, qualitative impoverishment, quantitative impoverishment, homogenization, the

destruction of rhythms, of underlying meaning, the destruction of textual systematisms, of

vernacular linguistic networks, of locutions and idiomatic expressions, of superposition of

languages.

What do all these have in common? Rationalization reorganizes sentences according to a

certain idea of what is considered to be the correct order of the passage. Clarification is a

consequence of this, making clear what does not appear to be in the text or specifying what is not

specified in the text. A typical example of this is the transformation of metaphors into similes.

Expansion is also linked to clarification and rationalization, in that it explains the text. Naturally,

explaining or untangling a text means that the source is considered to be tangled up and therefore

not clearly readable; again, this is where metaphors tend to be substituted by similes. Berman

considers ennoblement to be the final point of Platonic translation. The translated text is better than

the source, it is more elegant o “poetical” in places where the source was less refined. Of course,

also the opposite can occur by using a pseudo-jargon which hides the text.

Qualitative and quantitative impoverishment means that, in the first case, expressions of the

original are substituted with words of lower iconic value, and in the second case, lexical dispersion

occurs. With homogenization, all the levels of the original are unified to some extent. The

destruction of rhythm for example impacts on punctuation and in some way rhythm. The

destruction of the significant networks eliminates the underlying connections between key signifiers

which do not appear on the surface, but which are fundamental in the economy of the text.

So by destroying systematisms you add or eliminate elements and the text becomes

domesticated and is made readable. Finally, the destruction of the vernacular networks, the

destruction of locutions and the elimination of the superposition of languages conceals and

standardizes the translated text making it a usable product for the reader of the language into which

the text is being translated.

The identification of these deforming tendencies is not done to suggest an alternative

methodology. It is done rather to show that these are common in any Western translation and

correspond to a precise cultural choice.

With Berman, in relation to the role that translation play in cultures, we need to remember the

contribution of the school of Tel Aviv, whose main representatives are Itamar Even-Zohar and

Gideon Toury and who, within the framework of the Polysystem Theory, highlighted the

heterogeneous cultural conditions in which a translation is carried out. The concept of polysystem is

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an attempt to define all the activities which are considered to be literary within a culture. In this

sense, the polysystem is a system of heterogeneous systems which make up literature, literature

being conceived as a system in movement with transformations and continuities. From this point of

view, literature is not only considered in an abstract way but is also connected to the judgments of

value which belong to a specific historical period. Furthermore, literature is never isolated and is

never pure, because it always comes into contact with other literatures creating continuous

interferences. These interferences cannot be eliminated in the contacts between cultures and are

usually unilateral because literature is a source, it performs this role thanks to its prestige and the

fact that the importing system needs to find models which it does not find in itself.

In this sense, a series of oppositions have an important role: the existence of canonical texts

and non-canonical texts; between the center and periphery of the system, between innovation and

tradition.

The concept of a canonical text is fundamental to understand how certain cultural categories

are passed down in a given society. In the case of texts, the pertinence to the canon depends on the

legitimacy of the dominating cultural groups. In relation to the concept of canonization, there is the

distinction between center and periphery. The center of the literary system is inevitably occupied by

canonical texts, in other words, those which have been introduced by the official culture and which

have achieved legitimacy of the institution. Also the opposition between tradition and innovation is

in relation to the problem of accepting a given work at a precise time. The tradition that is to say the

fixed repertoire which makes it up, is a secondary system, its texts will be in some way predictable

and any attempt to compromise this instability will be perceived as an aggression. On the contrary

the innovator is a primary system in which new elements intervene and where a repertoire becomes

defined. A system can be stable or unstable, depending on its ability to handle changes and

assimilate them.

Translated literature follows the same reasoning and can become primary or secondary

depending on the specific conditions operating in the polysystem. In this sense, translated literature

is a system within the literary polysystem. The receiving system selects the foreign literature

accepting the literary conventions of the same polysystem. This filter will be applied in relation to

the conditions of the receiving polysystem: a fixed polysystem will try to impose its models on

translations; on the contrary, a weak polysystem will be subject to the influence of the models it

imports. Specifically, translation, if we consider that it is first and foremost a cultural exchange, has

a central role in a language in three social situations: when a literature is young or is in the process

of being established; when a literature is peripheral or weak; when a culture is undergoing a crisis.

In the first two cases, the translated literature is needed to fill in the gaps of the polysystem and it

also creates a dependence of the weak or peripheral literatures compared to the central ones. In the

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third case, translated literature can have a primary function also in central literatures.

Ideology

Is there a relation between translation and ideology? No, if we think that translating means to

reproduce the original message in all its functions. Yes, if we consider that in many translation

projects it is necessary to take decisions and solve complex problems with imagination, experience

and cleverness. Ideology is present in every intellectual work, consequently also in translation.

The topic of ideology has an important role to play in post-translation studies. In point of fact,

however, Susan Bassnett already proposed the theme of ideology, identity and culture as a center of

interest for translation in 1991. just at the beginning of the second decade of Translation Studies.

The presentation and article were pioneering and showed the changing climate within studies in

translation during the Eighties. The new direction replaced traditional categories such as “source

text,” “target text,” and “fidelity” with an expressed interest in the historical, cultural and

ideological conditions which determine the translator activity. Similarly and already in the Eighties,

André Lefevere proposed the topic of ideology as a center of interest for Translation Studies. The

perspective of Lefevere resembled that of Michel Foucault for whom discourses constitute a

complex and unstable system in which they can be an instrument and an effect of power.

Some years later Peter Fawcett, in the article on “Translation and Ideology” published by

Routledge Encyclopedia of TS, pointed out that institutions and individuals use their beliefs to

motivate and affect translation. The author stressed that it is possible to find an ideological approach

to translation in many ancient testimonies. In the same direction, Christina Schäffner in 2003

reminded us that translations are inevitably ideological because ideology always lies behind the

selection of a source text and the use to which a target text is put. The interests, scopes, and goals of

individuals and institutions shape the work and product of translation. Also Christiane Nord in

Translation as A Purposeful Activity (1997) noted the same thing: decisions about the process of

translation are taken, consciously or unconsciously, on the basis of ideological motivations. This

means that ideology is determinant in the definition of goals but also in establishing translating

strategies and norms.

At the beginning of the nineties an important book by Tejaswini Niranjana (Siting

Translation. History, Post-structuralism and the Colonial Context [1992]) addressed the

relationship between translation ideology and identity. For Niranjana translation is one the most

important fields of study for scholars who want to understand how relationships between cultures

are established on the basis of a series of asymmetries. Every culture is the bearer of a whole

inventory of implicit values that constitute its ideology. These values are present in the process of

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translation. We find here a form of dissimulation: concepts like fidelity claim to transform a

particular perspective into something considered objective. Derrida would speak in this case of a lie.

For example translation has developed a decisive role in building a fixed image of Asian, an image

that is foundational to the relationship that the Western world has established with Asia.

In 2003, Maria Tymoczko researched the position of the translator. Translation for Tymoczko

places itself in a special space that is the space where existence is defined as “existence in between”

two cultures, two ideologies, two languages, two worldviews, and so forth. In this “in between”

space we find a blend of linguistic acts of the source text with the linguistic acts of the target

context. Ideology shows itself precisely in the space between these two moments.

Translation obliges us to reconsider the role of ideology in the building of identities and

cultures. In this sense, translation brings into play the relation between language and ideology. It

also brings into play as a consequence the idea of language as a constant movement, heterogeneous

and polymorphic.

Meaning

Often, in Translation Studies, the concept of ‘equivalence’ of meaning is mentioned, and it is

maybe the most discussed issue concerning translation.

In the topic of equivalence a special role has been played by Eugene Nida. He is particularly

important because in his model he has recognized the non-linguistic specificity of the issue. Of

special relevance is his distinction between a formal and dynamic equivalence. While formal

equivalence pays attention to the correspondences between form and content, the dynamic one is

achieved when in the target language are created the same communicative relations existing

between message and receiver in the source language. In this way Nida redefined the concept of

fidelity rediscussing the terms of the problem. What is interesting in Nida is that the concept of

equivalence has many levels and particularly the 3 levels that Charles Morris developed in his

theory of signs: pragmatic, syntactic and semantic.

Nida was a genius, but his perspective reveals what we have called with Berman the

ideology of translation in the Western framework. It is present here the idea that the meaning can be

saved in the original sense after it has been deprived of its “body”.

By my perspective I have insisted that translating means much more of this and we have to

assume as a matter of fact that if similarity is one of the basis of any translation, at the same time

we cannot forget the difference that inevitably exists between the two texts and the work of

mediation of the translator .

The development of cognitive studies on meaning also proved that meaning cannot remain

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unchanged when going from a language to another. New research which has developed in the field

of Cognitive Linguistics have put meaning at the centre of the attention of linguists, re-establishing

a tradition which has always considered language in function of meaning and which does not

separate that from other aspects of cognition. From the point of view of Cognitive Linguistics,

linguistic skills are not entirely attributable to an innate potential, but they come from the

interactions and contexts in which they are acquired and developed. Language skills cannot be

isolated from the other cognitive skills: behind language, there is a wide range of cognitive

resources which put infinite connections into play and coordinate a vast amount of information.

The new cognitivist approaches can offer new possibilities to the broad area of studies on

translation, above all in the direction to go beyond some of the limits of the discipline. So the

explosion of semantics in the cognitive studies and the idea that metaphors structure our world

perception can permit us to go beyond these limits and encourage a possible rethinking of

translation studies founded on a wider consideration of the kind of facts which are connected with

translation. For example concepts like domain, frame, profile, mental spaces, and similarity can be

very productive in this area. The distinction between profile-frame and dominion is particularly

useful in order to understand the nature of phenomenon such as the semantic differences between

words and their apparent equivalent in other languages. Or to understand in which sense synonyms

are different. In this case it is useful to cast light upon difficulties of translation that depend on the

differences of profiling certain concepts.

A further contribution of cognitive studies is that they revisited the old theory of linguistic

relativism in the light of new cognitive research. In this sense, many of the differences between

languages come from a different way to conceptualize reality. Just like different metaphors imply

different conceptualizations, different cultures structure their cognitive universes in different ways.

What implications does this idea have on translation? Are different conceptualizations compatible

or incommensurable? How do we deal with them? Should we force the differences or highlight

them?

A response to this series of questions is, as many scholars have done, to go back to

Schleiermacher who wrote there are only two possible options in translation: the translator either

leaves the writer well alone and moves the reader towards him, or he leaves the reader well alone

and moves the author towards the reader. Fo example Berman is in favor of an approach which

highlights the difference, and which therefore moves towards the foreign text.

This refusal of the “annexation” approach can be found also in Henri Meschonic who stresses

that usually, faced with the choice of showing the translation for what it is or hiding it, he much

rather prefers the second option, and therefore prefers to look for as many devices as possible to

obtain a natural sounding effect in the target language.

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This is particularly evident when the metaphorical network is broken down.

This process entails the suppression of differences between languages.

Meschonnic calls this effect annexation, in other words the annulment of the textual

relationship between the two texts involved, and the encapsulation of the source text in the

receiving culture which annuls differences pertaining to culture, time, and linguistic structure.

Meschonic pits decentralization against annexation, which is to view translation not as the

carrier of the source text into the target language but as the fusion of two poetics.

In line with Schleiermacher is Lawrence Venuti who distinguishes between domestication and

foreignization. Domesticating means creating a translation which tries to avoid giving readers the

impression they are reading a foreign text; therefore a fluid and transparent style is adopted.

Foreignizing means deliberately violating the rules of the target language, and therefore the

translator highlights the source of the text clearly identifying the source language and culture, in

order to maintain some of this diversity.

Conclusion

Translation is a special experience. Using the word experience means that translation does not

concern an object or a relation among objects. This is a crucial point because it has consequences

for the theory and practice of translation. A lot of thoughts on translation concentrate on entities

such as a single concept or words, on their equivalent in different languages, or on the relations of

the translated text, for example with the original, with other environments of destinations, with

receptors, etc. These entities are like objects that are studied “per se” or in relation to other objects.

Totally different is the perspective if we consider translation as experience.

On the contrary, if we think of translation as an experience, it is about a process and not a

series of objects. It is about something that happens during this process which changes the

surrounding environment. The act of translating creates a new text, but it some way it modifies the

source text as well, emphasizing particular aspects and certain values. After all, a text is already an

example of plurality, it's the product of other texts, of other "originals". So, the most important

connection between an original text and its translation is not a chronological one; it is rather a

relationship of mutual debt and for this reason, talking about equivalence is nonsense. Translation

implies the incessant movement of texts; it is not about static relationships but dynamic ones.

Thus, traditional categories through which we have tried to describe translation, such as

equivalence, faithfulness, comparison, etc. referring to products are not enough to appreciate the

movement of meaning generated through the act of translation.

Finally, translation is also characterised by two other pivotal aspects: Similarities and

Differences.

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Similarity

Umberto Eco (2003a) has written that he would like to define translation as: to say the same

thing but he concludes correctly that this is impossible. At the most, he adds, translation means to

say almost the same thing:

What does "to translate" mean? The first, somewhat comforting, answer would be: translating is saying the same thing in another language. The problem is that we cannot establish with great precision what "saying the same thing" means, because of all those processes we call paraphrase, definition, explanation, reformulation, not to mention replacements with synonyms. Secondly, the problem is that when having to translate a text, we don't know what the thing is. Finally, in some cases, it is even uncertain what "to say" means...

It is essential to understand, as Eco says, that "even knowing that we never say the same thing,

it is possible to say almost the same thing" (Eco 2003: 9-10). But also this softened definition

doesn't find the agreement of all.

I believe that Eco's definition should be integrated with the concept of similarity.

Wilhelm von Humboldt may have been the first scholar to suggest that we should take the

idea of similarity as central for research into languages and cultures. For Humboldt die Form der

Sprache represents the principle that constitutes the individuality and the diversity of a language,

providing the way by which language organizes itself as an organic totality. Humboldt utilizes a

metaphor to explain this concept, the metaphor of weaving: language is like a weaving where every

thread is connected with another and all with the whole. But if language is like a weaving what is

the weft or filling and how is it constructed? On this subject Humboldt writes that language forms a

weaving of similarities. This means that similarity represents the knot that forms the weft. We can

say that what makes language an organic totality are the similarity relations in its structure, without

those relations language would be a simple aggregation. In short, similarity is the Dasein of

language. Without similarity language itself does not exist. This is of an extraordinary relevance

for translation.

In the field of Translation Studies, it was Andrew Chesterman (1996, 2005) who suggested

replacing the concept of equivalence with that of similarity, observing that there are at least two

kinds of similarities: a diverging and converging one. The first is when similarity is reciprocate: e.g.

two sisters look alike (A is similar to B and B is similar to A); the second is the one for which a

thing is similar to another: we can say that a daughter looks like her mother, but it would be strange

to say that a daughter looks like her mother because in a chronological sense this would be false

(therefore A is similar to B but B is not similar to A). These two different types of similarity are

also the ways in which the translators and readers view translation. While a translator sees it as a

kind of diverging similarity, the second sees it as a converging similarity.

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To define similarity in a way that can be helpful for translation we can adopt a semiotic

perspective. It is possible to say that there is similarity between two expressions if there is someone

who guarantees and stipulates it.

Peirce writes that an interpreter, (who translates orally) is : “Who says that a foreigner says

the same thing which he himself says” (CP 1.553, 1867). The difference is clear: Peirce doesn't

know if the the interpreter or the translator says the same thing of the foreigner, he knows only that

the translator claims to says to say the same thing and we have to trust that it is true. Eco's

perspective has two speech acts and their similarity, which is, so to speak a matter of fact. In

Perice's version, on the contrary it is possible the similarity between two speech acts if there is

someone that guarantees it. This second perspective connects a quality (similarity) with two two

speech acts thanks to a norm. The similarity in this case is the presupposition of a relation, not the

relation. Moreover, in this case we understand how similarity standards can change, as they depend

on cultural context, values and ideologies that circulate during a certain era and somehow modify

the kind of guarantor who assesses the concept of similarity.

Difference

Similarity is not sufficient. There are many other texts that have many kinds of similarities. In

fact we cannot speak of translation between two texts if there is not also a specific kind of

difference. The most obvious example is that the first text is in one language and the second in

another. But what is the specific feature of the difference which appears in translation?

This is less trivial than it seems. If similarity can only be established through an external

indicator, differences do not only concern relationships between texts, but also relationships

between cultures in which texts circulate. Again, it is useful to quote Eco. After stating that

translating could mean "to say almost the same thing", he adds that, given this definition, it is

necessary to find out what that "almost" means.

How do we "almost say the same thing"? Who decides that "almost" is enough to consider a

text a translation and not a completely different text? Of course, finding an objective criterion seems

impossible - we said that throughout history, texts that we would now consider to be translations

were considered independent texts and vice versa. Or think of Eliot's quartet which translates entire

texts by Juan de la Cruz: is this to be considered a translation or an independent text? Eco also asks:

How flexible should that "almost" be?... Establishing flexibility, the extent of the "almody",

depends on certain criteria which are to be negotiated in advance. Saying "almost" the same thing is

a procedure which is at the basis of negotiation (Eco 2003 10).

But what is the matter that has to be negotiated? The translator besides negotiate the texts has

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also to think about the possible mutual prejudices, and these are not linguistics issues but more

generally cultural issues. If the linguistic code difference shows itself as a barrier of intelligibility,

the cultural difference shows itself as a barrier of acceptability and confidence.

In other words the difference in translation has many semiotics levels which implies an

incessant work of mediation (cfr. Mossop 1983: 246; Kommissarov 1996: 370; Petrilli

1999/2000a: 12; Chesterman 2003, s.p.).

The concept of mediation introduces an important aspect which I would like to conclude with.

Mediation is a form of communication which is necessary to manage conflict; it implies differences

and provides solutions of the differences through a negotiation carried out on behalf of a mediator.

It is a process in which there is a change in the behaviour of the parties involved which can be

explained only with the intervention of a mediator (Greco 2011). If we think of translation as

mediation and of translators as mediators, we can interpret the translation process as an out-and-out

process of reasoning, in which the two debaters are not individuals but two cultures facing off

against each other (cf. Rigotti-Greco 2005), and in which the two parties have a relationship that

can also be of a conflicting nature (Baker 2006). In this sense, translation plays a heroic task, it

becomes the place where conflicts seek a solution, and cultures do not clash but attempt to find a

common ground (cf. also Pym 2012 143 ff).

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