For years translations were
considered as derivatives, copies, and translators as mechanical devices replacing
linguistic codes (equivalents) from one language into another, and the
translator's autonomy was always questioned (and is still being questioned) by
those who thought of him/her ‘as a monkey, with no choice save to make the same
grimaces as his master’ (Leppihalme, 1997: 19),
until recent years when, under the influence of poststructuralism and
functionalism, the focus of attention has been shifted to the issue of
translator’s agency and subjectivity, and the notions of originality and
(absolute) equivalence and also author’s superiority over translator have been
severely questioned. Bassnett (1996) stresses the need for reassessing the role
of the translator by analyzing his/her intervention in the process of
linguistic transfer, when she argues ‘Once considered a subservient,
transparent filter through which a text could and should pass without
adulteration, the translation can now be seen as a process in which
intervention is crucial’ (p. 22). Awareness
of complexity of translation process and avoidance of the simplistic view of
regarding translation as mere process of transferring words from one text to
another, Álvarez & Vidal (1996) claim, will result in realizing the
importance of the ideology underlying a translation.
They argue that behind every one of the translator’s selections, as what
to add, what to leave out, which words to choose and how to place them, ‘there
is a voluntary act that reveals his history and the socio-political milieu that
surrounds him; in other words, his own culture [and ideology]’. (Álvarez
& Vidal, 1996: 5).
The exercise of ideology in translation is as old as the history of
translation itself. According to Fawcett (1998), ‘throughout the centuries,
individuals and institutions applied their particular beliefs to the production
of certain effect in translation’ (p. 107). He claims that ‘an ideological
approach to translation can be found in some of the earliest examples of
translation known to us’ (p. 106). Nevertheless,
the linguistics-oriented approaches to translation studies have failed to
address the concept of ideology through years of their prevalence, because such
approaches are limited to their scientific models for research and the
empirical data they collect, so that ‘they remain reluctant to take into account
the social values [and ideologies] that enter into translating as well as the
study of it’ (Venuti, 1998a: 1). The deficiency of old linguistics-based
approaches – which ‘are mainly descriptive studies focusing on textual forms’
(Calzada-Pérez, 2003: 8) – in accounting
for social values in translation and other aspects of language use resulted in
developing a new trend of research called Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)
‘whose primary aim is to expose the ideological forces that underlie
communicative exchanges [like translating]’ (Calzada-Pérez, 2003: 2). According to CDA advocates, all language use,
including translation, is ideological and this means that translation is always
a site for ideological encounters (p. 2). Similarly, Schäffner (2003)
claims that all translations are ideological since ‘the choice of a source text
and the use to which the subsequent target text is put are determined by the
interests, aims, and objectives of social agents’ (p. 23). She evidently opts
for van Dijk’s definition for ideology as ‘basic systems of shared social
representations that may control more specific group beliefs’ (van Dijk, 1996: 7). However, there are a profusion of diverse
definitions of ideology defining the term from different perspectives – amongst
them is van Dijk’s definition – some of which are deemed necessary to be
overviewed here.
Definitions of ideology
The term ‘ideology’ has been always
accompanied by its political connotation as it is evident in its dictionary
definition as ‘a system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the
basis of economic or political theory and policy’ (The New Oxford
Dictionary of English). Translation scholars who slant in favor of the
political definitions of ideology mainly believe that translating itself is a
political act as Tahir-Gürçağlar (2003:
113) argues, ‘Translation is political because, both as activity and
product, it displays process of negotiation among different agents. On
micro-level, these agents are translators, authors, critics, publishers,
editors, and readers’. Under the influence of Marx who defines ideology as
action without knowledge (false consciousness), ideology is sometimes defined
in its negative political sense as ‘a system of wrong, false, distorted or
otherwise misguided beliefs’ (van Dijk, qtd in Calzada-Pérez, 2003: 3). In its more constructive sense, Marxists like
Lenin define Socialist ideology as ‘a force that encourages revolutionary
consciousness and fosters progress’ (Calzada-Pérez, 2003: 4). According to Calzada-Pérez (ibid.),
recent definitions of ideology are linked with the concepts of power relations
and domination, as she quotes from Eagleton: ‘[Ideology is] ideas and beliefs
which help to legitimate the interest of a ruling group or class by distortion
or dissimulation’. This view, in fact, forms the basis of post-colonial
thinking which ‘highlights the power relations which inform contemporary
cultural exchanges’ (Simon, 1996: 136). However,
Calzada-Pérez (2003) argues that sometimes ideology is viewed in more
positive sense ‘as a vehicle to promote or legitimate interests of a particular
social group (rather than a means to destroy contenders)’ (p. 5).
Scholars in
the field of language-related, cultural and translation studies, however, often
tend to extend the concept of ideology beyond political sphere and define it in
a rather politically neutralized sense as ‘a set of ideas, which organize our
lives and help us understand the relation to our environment’
(Calzada-Pérez, 2003: 5). In most parts
of the current paper, nevertheless, the writer opts for the definition proposed
by van Dijk (1996: 7) for ideology as a
framework that is ‘assumed to specifically organize and monitor one form of
socially shared mental representation, in other words, the organized evaluative
beliefs—traditionally called 'attitudes'—shared by social groups’.
Position of ideology
The ideology of translation could be traced in both process
and product of translation which are, however, closely interdependent. The
ideology of a translation, according to Tymoczko (2003), will be a combination
of the content of the source text and the various speech acts represented in
the source text relevant to the source context, layered together with the
representation of the content, its relevance to the receptor audience, and the
various speech acts of the translation itself addressing the target context, as
well as resonance and discrepancies between these two ‘utterances’. However,
she further explains that ‘the ideology of translation resides not simply in
the text translated, but in the voicing and stance of the translator, and in
its relevance to the receiving audience’ (pp. 182–83). Schäffner (2003)
explains:
Ideological aspect can […] be
determined within a text itself, both at the lexical level (reflected, for
example, in the deliberate choice or avoidance of a particular word […]) and
the grammatical level (for example, use of passive structures to avoid an
expression of agency). Ideological aspects can be more or less obvious in
texts, depending on the topic of a text, its genre and communicative purposes.
(p. 23)
Ideological aspects can also be examined in the
process of text production (translating) and the role of the translator as a
target text producer as well as a source text interpreter. These aspects along
with two major influencing schools of post-structuralism and functionalism will
be further explained in details in the following paragraphs.
Ideology and the translator as a reader of the source text:
Poststructuralism
According to Venuti (1992: 6),
poststructuralist thinkers like Derrida and de Man, mainly under the influence
of Benjamin’s works, explode the binary opposition between original and
translation which causes translators to be invisible. Before the emergence of
poststructuralism, structuralists like Saussure, defined language as the
scientifically examinable world of symbols constituting the linguistic system
and social structure within which the individual is socially shaped. The
structuralists believed that ‘language is constructed as a system of signs, each
sign being the result of conventional relation between word and meaning,
between a signifier (a sound or sound-image) and a signified (the referent, or
concept represented by the signifier)’ (Roman, 2002: 309). Later, Barthes, an
early poststructuralist, claimed that ‘signifiers and singnifieds are not
fixed, unchangeable, but, on the contrary, can make the sign itself signifying
more complex mythical signs as intricate signifiers of the order of myth’
(Roman, 2002: 310). This shift of idea from structuralism toward
poststructuralism resulted in extreme revisions in different domains of
language, for example, developing of ‘the death of author’ thinking which later
found its way into Translation Studies. From instability of the signifiers and
signifieds, Barthes concludes that reading texts in terms of authorial
intention or what we think the author meant by such and such a statement, and
referring the source of meaning and authority of a text back to its author (as
the creator of that text) is no more acceptable (Royle, 2003: 7). Barthes
argues that ‘since writers only write within a system of language in which
particularized authors are born and shaped, texts cannot be thought of in terms
of their author’s intentions, but only in relationship with other texts: in
intertextuality’ (Roman, 2002: 311). In the
absence of the author, Barthes explains, the readers (a translator could be one
of them) interpret texts by setting them against their backdrop of known words
and phrases, existing statements, familiar conventions, anterior texts, or, in
other words, their general knowledge which is ideological; and the meaning of a
text becomes what individual readers extract from it, not what a supreme Author
put in. (Hermans, 1999: 69) ‘ “The birth of the reader must be at the cost of
the death of the Author”, Barthes bravely declares’ (ibid).
Derrida,
another poststructuralist, draws attention from the signifieds to the chain of
signifiers, as Roman (2002) explains:
Derrida takes the structure of sign from Saussure, but
transforms it into a fluid entity, whereby meaning and writing consist solely
in signifiers. Signifiers refer only to each other and meaning becomes unstable
since any deferral to yet another signifier implies a difference in an endless
chain of signification. This is the meaning of the French term différence
(from the French verb différer, with its polysemantics of to
differ and to delay), or Différance, a neologism created by
Derrida particularly to express the indeterminacy of meaning. (p. 311)
According to Venuti (1992), poststructuralist thinkers believe that
the original is itself a translation, an incomplete process of translating a
signifying chain into univocal signified, and this process is both displayed
and further complicated when it is translated by another signifying chain in a
different language. The originality of the foreign text is thus compromised by
the poststructuralist concept of textuality. Neither the foreign nor the
translation is an original semantic unity; both are derivative, consisting of
diverse linguistic and cultural materials, making meaning plural and
differential (p. 7). In the same way, neither the author nor the translator as
a reader of source text possesses the authorial power to definitely determine
the meaning; and the ‘authority’ will always remain collective due to endless
circle of signification.
Poststructuralist
textuality redefines the notion of equivalence in translation by assuming from
the outset that the differential plurality in every text precludes a simple
correspondence of meaning, and a ratio of loss and gain inextricably occurs
during translation process (Venuti, 1992: 7–8). Similarly,
Carbonell (1996) points out that, since the nature of the context of
signification in both the source and target cultures is heterogeneous, meaning
changes unavoidably in the process of translation and there will be always
possibility of contradiction between the author’s intentions and the
translator’s (p. 98).
But why have
such relativism and perspectivism result not in a state of complete anarchy and
unintelligibility? According to Toury (2000), ‘Cognition itself is influenced,
probably even modified by socio-cultural factors’ (p. 119). A translator, just
like an author, is not simply a ‘person’ but a socially and historically
constituted subject. As mentioned earlier, translators interpret texts by
setting them against their backdrop of known words and phrases, existing
statements, familiar conventions, anterior texts, or, in other words, their
general knowledge which is ideological. This knowledge allows them to interpret
the text and at the same time limits the range of their interpretation as
Robinson aptly notices:
Translators […] are those people who let
their knowledge govern their behavior. And that knowledge is ideological. It is
controlled by ideological norms. If you want to become a translator you must
submit to the translator’s submissive role, submit to being possessed by what
ideological norms inform you. (qtd. in Calzada-Pérez, 2003: 7)
What brings de facto the individual interpretations
close together is the likeness of the intertextual and ideological
configurations the individuals are located in. Translators are hardly (maybe
never) aware of ideological factors governing their process of the source text interpretation
Toury (1999: 18) admits the difficulties of determining the role of
socio-cultural factors which unconsciously affect the translator’s behavior:
One thing I would not venture to do […] is tackle the
intriguing question of how, and to what extent, the environment affects the
workings of the brain, or how the cognitive is influenced by the
socio-cultural, even though this would surely make an invaluable contribution
to our understanding of translation.
Nevertheless, sometimes it becomes extremely difficult for a
translation scholar to justify whether the ideological discrepancies observed
between the source text and the target text are results of the translator’s
subconscious ideological interpretation or of his/her intentional ideological
intervention which will be discussed in the following paragraphs.
Ideology and the translator
as a writer of the target text: Functionalism
While
one of the pivotal achievements of the poststructuralist approaches is
dethroning the author and his/her authorial intention by emphasizing the role
of the translator as an autonomous reader of the source text, functionalist
approaches try to dethrone the source text itself by emphasizing the role of
the translator as a creator of the target text and giving priority to purpose (skopos)
of producing target text.
According to
Schäffner (1996), ‘Functionalist approach is a kind of cover term for the
research of scholars who argue that the purpose of the TT is the most important
criterion in any translation’ (p. 2). Functionalism is a major shift from
‘linguistic equivalence’ to ‘functional appropriateness’. From the perspective
of functional approaches to translation (particularly, under the influence of
Holz-Mänttäri’s theory of ‘translational action’), translation is viewed
as a communicative act. In this view, translation is conceived primarily ‘as a
process of intercultural communication, whose end product is a text which is
capable of functioning appropriately in specific situations and context of use’
(Schäffner, 1998a: 3).
The principles
of translational (translatorial) action theory then founded the basis of Vermeer’s Skopos theory. ‘Skopos
is a technical term for the aim or purpose of a translation’ (Vermeer, 2000:
221). Skopostheorists assert that any action has an aim, a purpose. From
their standpoint, translation is considered not as a process of transcoding
(the position usually adopted by earlier non-functionalist approaches), but as
a form of human action which has its own purpose basically decided on by the translator
(Schäffner, 1998b: 235; Hönig, 1998: 9). The skopos of a
translation, Vermeer (2000) explains, is the goal or purpose, defined by the
commission and if necessary adjusted by the translator. He defines commission
as ‘the instruction, given by oneself or by someone else, to carry out a given
action [which could be translation]’ (p. 229).
A text in skopostheorist approach is regarded as an offer
of information from its producer to a recipient. Translation is then a
secondary offer of information about information originally offered in another
language within another culture (Schäffner, 1998b: 236). The translator,
as an expert in translational action, must interpret ST information ‘by
selecting those features which most closely correspond to the requirements of
the target situation (Shuttleworth & Cowie, 1997: 156). From this point of
view, the translation process is not (necessarily) determined retrospectively
by the source text, its effects on its addressees, or the intention of its
author, but prospectively by the skopos of the target text as determined
by the target recipient’s requirements (which are, however, discerned and
decided on by the translator himself/ herself). The translation then is ‘the
production of a functionally appropriate target text based on an existing
source text [or what Neubert calls ‘source-text induced target-text
production’], and the relationship between the two texts is specified according
to the skopos of the translation’ (Schäffner, 1998b: 236).
Focusing on the purpose of translation as the most decisive factor
in translation action, skopos theory emphasizes the role of the
translator as an expert in translational action and regards the source text no
longer as the ‘sacred original’ from which the skopos (purpose) of the translation
is deduced, but as a mere offer of information whose role in the action is to
be decided by the translator, depending on the expectations and needs of the
target readers (Hönig, 1998: 9). Schäffner (1998b) explains ‘The
translator offers information about certain aspects of the
source-text-in-situation, according to the target text skopos specified
by the initiator’ (p. 236). Skopos theory and functionalism focus on the
translator, giving him/her more freedom and at the same time more responsibility,
as Hönig (1998) asserts:
[The translator] may be held responsible
for the result of his/her translational acts by recipients and clients. In
order to act responsibly, however, translators must be allowed the freedom to
decide in co-operation with their clients what is in their best interests. (p.
10)
An awareness of the requirements of the skopos, Vermeer
maintains, ‘expands the possibilities of translation, increases the range of
possible translation strategies, and releases the translator from the corset of
an enforced – and hence often meaningless – literalness’ (qtd. in Shuttleworth
& Cowie, 1997: 156). The translator thus becomes a target-text author freed
from the ‘limitations and restrictions imposed by a narrowly defined concept of
loyalty to the source text alone’ (Schäffner, 1998b: 238).
Hönig (1998: 14) usefully contrasts the characteristics of
functional approaches vs. non-functional approaches as follows:
| FUNCTIONALIST |
|
NON-FUNCTIONALIST |
| |
Translator |
|
| Is loyal to his client Must be visible |
|
Faithful to the author
Should be invisible
|
| |
Translation processes should be
|
|
| Target text oriented
|
|
Source text oriented
|
|
|
Aim of translation is
|
|
| Communicative acceptability
|
|
Linguistic equivalence
|
|
|
Translation tools taken from
|
|
| Psycho-, sociolinguistics, text linguistics
(supporting decisions)
|
|
Contrastive linguistics lexical semantics
(applying rules)
|
|
|
Analogy
|
|
| Building bridge |
|
Crossing river
|
Figure 1: A schematic view of functionalist and non-functionalist approaches
As it is
evident in Hönig’s schematic view, ‘visibility’ of the translator
is a key concept in functional approaches. According to Hönig (1998:
12–13), in functionalism the translator inevitably has to be visible, since
functional approaches do not establish rules but support decision-making
strategies and the translator has to make critical decisions as to how define
the translation skopos and which strategies can best meet the target
recipient’s requirements; s/he should be visible, making his/her decisions
transparent to his/her client and accepting the responsibility of
his/her choices. A visible translator has to accept the consequences of his/her
translational decisions, as Toury (1999) declares, ‘it is always the translator
herself or himself, as an autonomous individual, who decides how to behave, be
that decision fully conscious or not. Whatever the degree of awareness, it is
s/he who will also have to bear the consequences’ (p. 19).
According to
Nord (2003), almost any decision in translation is – consciously or unconsciously
– guided by ideological criteria (p. 111). Ideological factors are very
decisive in defining the translation skopos (target-text intended
purpose) and selecting the functionally appropriate strategies by the
translator, based on the expectations of the translation clients. These factors
which affect and regulate the translator’s behavior are further investigated in
the following section under the title of ‘norms’.
Norms
According
to Toury (1999), all human beings have an inherent tendency toward socializing
and social acceptability; as a result, under normal conditions, people tend to
avoid behaviors which are prohibited or sanctioned as well as to adopt
behaviors which are considered as being appropriate within the group they
belong to (pp. 15–19). There is a socially shared knowledge between members of
every community as to what is considered correct or appropriate as a
communicative behavior. This knowledge exists in the form of norms. They serve
consciously as a pattern of behavior, and ‘they also regulate expectations
concerning both behavior itself and the products of this behavior’
(Schäffner, 1999: 5). Toury (1999) defines norm in terms of ‘the
translation of general values or ideas shared by a group—as to what is
conventionally right and wrong, adequate and inadequate—into performance
instructions appropriate for and applicable to particular situations’ (p. 14).
Taking into consideration the definition of ideology by van Dijk (1996) as ‘the
organized evaluative beliefs shared by social groups’, norms—as defined by
Toury (1999)—seem to have much in common with ideology; in other words, norms
can be understood as ideological realization of the concept of appropriateness
and correctness.
Decision-making is a key concept in the discussion of norms. Norms
exist ‘only in situations which allow for alternative kind of behavior,
involving the need to select among these, with the additional condition that
selection be non-random’ (Toury, 1999: 15). This selection, according to Toury
(1999), could be posited between two constraining extremes of ‘relatively
absolute rules on one hand, and pure idiosyncrasies on the other’ (p. 16).
Toury applies the norms concept to translation studies presuming
that translating involves playing a social role subject to several types of
socio-cultural constraints of varying degree. He, consequently, argues that the
acquisition of a set of norms for determining the suitability of translational
behavior, and for maneuvering between all factors which may constrain it, is a prerequisite
for becoming a translator within a cultural environment (Toury, 2000: 198).
Toury (2000)
claims that norms govern every level of decision-making in the translating
process from choice of text to translate to the very final choices of translation
strategies of action. He, consequently, introduces three kinds of norm: 1)
initial norm; 2) preliminary norms; and 3) operational norms.
Initial norm
governs the translator’s overall decisions to adhere ‘either to the original
text, with the norms it has realized, or to the norms active in the target
culture, or in that section of it which would host the end product’ (Toury,
2000: 201). Toury (2000), however, denies the necessity of full conformity
between an overall decision made and every single decision be made in the
lower-levels of translation process; and, consequently, denies the existence of
absolute regularity in translational behaviors (p. 201). The options which are made available to the translator by Toury’s
initial norm are very similar to those which Venuti (1998b: 240) talks about in
his foreignizing and domesticating strategies of translation.
Preliminary
norms govern the decisions to be made concerning translation policy and directness.
According to Toury (2000: 202), ‘translation policy refers to those
factors that govern the choice of text types; or individual texts, to be
imported through translation into a particular culture/language at a particular
point in time’. He further explains that ‘considerations concerning directness
of translation involve the threshold of tolerance for translating from
languages other than the ultimate source language’ (p. 202).
Operational
norms direct the actual decisions made during the act of translation and are
subdivided into matricial and textual-linguistic norms. Matricial
norms govern the segmentation and distribution of textual materials in the
target text. Textual-linguistic norms ‘govern the selection of material
to formulate the target text in, or replace the original textual and linguistic
material with’ (Toury, 2000: 202–3).
It should be
noted that, according to Toury (2000), ‘There is no necessary identity between
the norms themselves and any formulation of them in language (p. 200). He
believes that the observed regularities in translational behaviors are not
themselves the norms; they are rather ‘external evidence’ which reflect the
existence of norms (Toury, 1999: 15). Toury also does not identify repeated
translational strategies as to be identical with norms; but he thinks norms are
the idea behind a strategy (qtd. in Schäffner, 1999: 84). Therefore,
Baker’s interpretation of norms as ‘regularities of translational behavior
within a specific socio-cultural situation’ (Baker, 1998: 163) or ‘strategies
of translation which are repeatedly opted for, in preference to other available
strategies, in a given culture or textual system’ (qtd. in Shuttleworth &
Cowie, 1997: 114) seems to be an oversimplification of this concept.
Chesterman
(1993) looks at the concept of norms from a different perspective. Whereas
Toury does not pay too much heed to the role of the readership and their
feedback in norm construction, Chesterman (1993: 8) puts distinction between expectancy
norms, which are the expectations of the target readership and the client
etc., and the professional norms which explain the translator's tendency
to observe these expectancy norms.
According to
Toury (2000), norms themselves actually are not observable. He declares that
what are actually available for observation are rather norm-governed instances
of behavior or the products of such behavior (p. 206). Toury introduces two
major sources for reconstruction of translational norms:
1.
Textual:
the translated text themselves, for all kinds of norms, as well as analytical
inventories of translation (i.e., ‘virtual texts’), for various preliminary
norms;
2.
Extratextual: semi-theoretical or critical formulations, such as perspective
‘theories’ of translation, statements made by translators, editors, publishers,
and other persons involved in or connected with the activity, critical
appraisals of individual translations, or the activity of a translator or
‘school’ of translators, and so forth. (Toury, 2000: 207)
Likewise,
Baker (1998) introduces studying of a ‘corpus of authentic translations’ as a
means for identifying regular instances of translational behavior which are
represented in that corpus by the translator, and, thus, for identifying the
translational norms (p. 164).
Concluding Point
After so many years of the dominance
of the prescriptive approaches over translation teaching, maybe the time has
come for a serious revision in translation teaching methods. Translation
teaching should no longer be seen as a set of rules and instructions prescribed
by translation teachers to the students as to what strategies will lead to a ‘good’
or ‘correct’ translation and what to a ‘wrong’ and ‘incorrect’
one. Understanding the importance of decision-making in translation, the
translation teachers should try to describe the actual translational decisions
made by actual translators under different socio-cultural and ideological
settings in real life and real situations, and explain the perlocutionary consequences
resulted from adoption of such decisions for the students. They should allow
the students to select voluntarily between different options they have at hand,
reminding them that they will be responsible for the selections they make.
Translation teachers should make it clear for the students that every
translation has its own aim determined by its translator, and that they could
freely choose the options that best serve their intended aim of translation.
