On radical asymmetry in cross-cultural communication

Anthony Pym © Intercultural Studies Group Universitat Rovira i Virgili Plaça Imperial Tàrraco 1 43005 Tarragona Fax: (++ 34) 977 55 95 97

Kent State

     A center for research and training, together Shreve: anthropology, text, process and cognition Also: technology, politics, cultural studies Research, not flavor of the week Leipzig and Neubert: Applied Linguistics, where texts are in society © Intercultural Studies Group

Nothing original here

  Tymoczko: “connecting the two infinite orders”: the process studies might show how cultures interrelate (Jakobsen) My belated mid-career crisis, and things I would like to know © Intercultural Studies Group

1. By comparing N with P:

 A whole curriculum © Intercultural Studies Group

By comparing N with P:

1. Process larger translation units 2. Use more paraphrase and less literalism as coping strategies 3. Automatize some complex tasks but also shift between automatized routine tasks and conscious problem-solving.

4. Use top-down processing and refer more to the translation purpose 5. Rely on encyclopaedic knowledge as opposed to ST construal 6. Express more principles and personal theories © Intercultural Studies Group

By comparing N with P:

7. Read texts faster and spend proportionally more time looking at the target text than at the source text (Jakobsen and Jensen 2008) 8. Spend longer reviewing their work at the post-drafting phase but make fewer changes when reviewing (Jensen and Jakobsen 2000, Jakobsen 2002, Englund Dimitrova 2005) © Intercultural Studies Group

By comparing N with P:

    P spends more time on the target side P revises for longer Because Skopos is right? Or because they are more on one side than the other? © Intercultural Studies Group

By comparing E with L

   Takeda: Late learners translate/interpret better? They learn through mapping skills. They are far more on one side than the other. © Intercultural Studies Group

2. Where is radical?

   Quine: “radical translation, i.e. translation of the language of a hitherto untouched people” Indeterminism: one text allows many translations, which “stand to each other in no plausible sort of equivalence relation however loose.” What is the relation between the jungle linguist and the native? © Intercultural Studies Group

The radical does not exist

    Quine: “a chain of interpreters of a sort can be recruited of marginal persons across the darkest achipelago”. Derrida: “iterability” – the possibility of text re-use There is always a degree of secondary encoding, giving relative certitude (Chesterman v. Arrojo) George William Grace: “Today, this ‘Western’ culture has expanded to embrace almost the entire world ” © Intercultural Studies Group

Brot

is

pain    Benjamin: In „Brot“ und „pain“ ist das Gemeinte zwar dasselbe, die Art, es zu meinen, dagegen nicht. Baudelaire: “le pain et le vin destinés à sa bouche” (La Bénédiction); “gagner ton pain de chaque soir” (La Muse vénale) Benjamin: “gleich einem Wurm des Menschen täglich Brot” (Comme un ver qui derobe a l'Homme ce qu'il mange) (Le crépuscule du soir) © Intercultural Studies Group

3. Inculturation

     John Paul II (1985): “the incarnation of the Gospel in autonomous cultures and at the same time the introduction of these cultures into the life of the Church.

” The great colonizations?

The European Union? A medical encounter? Translation Studies? © Intercultural Studies Group

Out-culturation

    Mexican culture Science fiction (Gouanvic) The gay novel (Harvey) Translation Studies? © Intercultural Studies Group

Meta-culturation

    The European Court European bureaucratic prose (Agent-principle reversal) Translation Studies? © Intercultural Studies Group

Sub-culturation

   MTV culture You Tube culture Translation Studies (Leipzig, from Prague and Bratislava, from Petersburg and Moscow, from Paris and Berlin… these are not wholly foreign languages) © Intercultural Studies Group

4. The translation form

   Alien-I and assumption of quantitative equality From a Renaissance based on the myth of equal languages Not found in India, China, Vietnam. © Intercultural Studies Group

What is to be done?

       Save languages? Save cultures? Encounters with alterity? Welcome the other as other?

Create understanding? Challenge power? What we need attention to now is the WHAT of translation. © Intercultural Studies Group