Transcript Institutional frameworks for translator training

New Approaches
to Translation
History
Anthony Pym
Intercultural Studies Group
Universitat Rovira i Virgili
Tarragona, Spain
Menu for morning session:
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Why do it?
Quantitative research?
Systems and norms?
Intercultures?
Why do translation history?
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Personal satisfaction
– So why communicate it?
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Protection and glory of target cultures
– So why look at translation?
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To challenge concepts of cultures?
– But there is nothing outside of cultures?
A traditional theory:
What translation is
SOURCE CULTURE
SOURCE TEXT
SOURCE MEANING
TARGET CULTURE
TARGET TEXT
TARGET MEANING
What’s missing?
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Cross-cultural intertextuality
Overlaps of cultures
Positions for receivers (how many
meanings?)
Positions for translators...
An alternative model:
An even better alternative model:
Locale 4
Locale 1
IC
Locale 3
Locale 2
What is different here?
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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?
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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...
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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
60000
50000
40000
30000
20000
10000
0
1950
1955
1960
Books
Translations
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
Measuring translation flows 2
T RANSLATIO NS F RO M LANG UAG E (IN THO USANDS)
FIG. 1. BOOKS TRANSLATED FROM LANGUAGE
BY BOOKS PUBLISHED IN LANGUAGE
UNESCO DATA FOR 1979-1983
20
Eng lish
15
10
Russi an
5
French
Ger man
Spani sh
Japanese
0
0
50
1 00
1 50
BOOKS PUBLISHED IN LANGUAGE ( IN THOUSANDS)
2 00
Measuring translation flows 3
PERCENT AG E OF T RANSLATI ONS IN LANG UAG E
FIG. 2a. PERCENTAGES OF TRANSLATIONS
BY BOOKS PUBLISHED IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES
UNESCO DATA FOR 1979- 1983
30
Albanian
Danish, Norwegian
Finnish, Arabic
Hebrew
Dutch
Slovak
It alian
Spanish
Hungarian
German
Turkish
French
Russian
Polish
Port uguese
Japanese
25
20
15
10
5
English
0
0
50
100
150
BOOKS PUBLISHED ( IN THOUSANDS)
200
Measuring translation flows 4
% BOOKS PUBL ISHED IN NON-NATIONAL LANGUAGES
FIG. 3. PERCENTAGE OF TRANSLATIONS
BY PERCENTAGE OF BOOKS PUBLISHED IN NON-NATIONAL LANGUAGES
UNESCO DATA FOR 1979-1983
35
30
Albania
25
20
15
Hungary
10
Brazil
5
0
Turkey
Japan
0
Poland USSR
5
10
Finland
Sweden
Netherlands
Arabic-speaking
countries
Norway
Denmark
Israel
Italy
Slovakia
Spanish-speaking countries
15
20
% TRANSLATIONS IN ALL BOOKS PUBLISHED
25
30
Which means:
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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...
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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...
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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?
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
1840
1860
German to F rench
F rench to German
British t o German
1880
1900
1920
1940
Is English-language culture
hegemonic?
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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?
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‘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?
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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:
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'no great novel has ever been rendered into
French without cuts' (Wyzewa 1901: 599).
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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:
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The textual relations of the original are
increasingly ignored in favour of the options
offered by the target language.
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Interference happens when the translation
is from a prestigious language or culture
and the target language or culture is minor.
In human terms...?
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The more the translator is in an interculture,
the less “natural” the translation.
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The bigger the receiving culture, the more
marginal the interculture and the more
“natural” the translation.
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... Perhaps...
Examples:
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Twelfth-century translations into Latin
were...
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...extremely literal.
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Nineteenth-century translations into French
were...
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...often very free...
But what of the power of the
individual?
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Rabbi Mose...
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Henri Albert...
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Ezra Pound
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... Or their patrons?
The real question is:
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Who makes history?
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(Or are the norms and systems simply
there?)
Activity
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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?