The aforementioned situation is an obvious instance of discourse capitalism which has been vehemently criticized by the post-structuralists and post-colonialists who have strongly questioned the legitimacy of the source author’s ownership of the discourse s/he creates. Some of them, like Chamberlain (1998), use the metaphor of gender to criticize moralistic ideology in translation and compare the thirst of the author camp for power to the patterns of paternalism in the human societies. However, what is sharply criticized is the asymmetrical power relation between the original author and the translator and the way in which power is distributed between them which seems to be discriminately in favor of the former.

Certainly, translation is not meant merely to represent the author or resemble the relationship between ST and TT. In my belief, there is no such a thing as transferring or conveying something invariant from one language or culture into another during the process of translation. In fact, the things moralists claim are invariantly transferred from one language into another (meaning, message ... etc.) already exist potentially in the form of the target system inventory of non-verbalized items, and, inspired by the source text, translators are just selecting, highlighting, and, occasionally, modifying these items in the target text through verbalization for a specific purpose. In other words, the source text is like the sunshine that helps the plant of target literary system to grow. The produced target text may merely be analogous with the source text; that is, some similar pattern or some kind of (indirect) analogous relationship may be discovered between the two texts that depicts how the translator’s choices and decisions during translation are affected by the source text. Therefore, translating is not a derived activity but mostly a process of affectedness, and translation a somehow affected product. It is the translator who decides how and to what extent the translation should be affected by the source text. The source text serves merely as a raw ingredient exploited by the translator to create his/her own product which pursues its own purpose. “Translation” is just a pretext: a label that the translator tags on his/her product to meet his/her objectives; and at the same time, it is a confession: an admission that a source text has been used in creating this product.    

The Question of Interest: Moral & Acceptable Translations vs. Successful Translation

There is no doubt about this that functionalist approaches provided the theoretical basis to unfetter translators from the chain of the source text and its author by shifting the attention from moral norms to social norms, but much caution should be exercised so that the functionalist ideology do not make the translator a slave again this time of the dominant social norms and do not force them to abide by the social norms blindly. An apparent tendency toward domesticating strategies in translation which is recently seen in many societies may be a result of the blind compliance with the dominant social norms. A functionalist approach often results in an acceptable translation but not necessarily a successful one, because it aims primarily to meet the expectations of the target audience and safeguard their interests. In other words, sometimes success in translation is achieved through violating the norms (be they moral or social) rather than observing them.

A translator who adopts a consequentialist ideology aims at producing a successful translation and morality and functional appropriateness do not matter to him unless when the success of his product depends on them. A successful translation is the one which fulfills the predetermined objectives set by the translator to be met. A consequentialist ideology requires the translator to be fully aware of his translational actions and the possible consequences of them. To this end, however, he should know the dominant moral and social norms and always be one step ahead of them. In the consequentialist ideology the focus of attention is not on the source text and its author (unlike the moralistic ideology), nor on requirements of the target audience (unlike the functionalist ideology), but on the translators themselves and their objectives to safeguard their interests. Such an approach allows the translators to violate the norms (be they moral or social) whenever it deemed necessary.

Ideological Norms and Translational Behavior: A Speculative Typology

With regard to the aforementioned discussion, it seems interesting to find out how ideological norms create variety in translational behavior of different translators. Regarding their state of consciousness, translators may show one of the following behaviors:

On Translation Pedagogy: A Consequentialist Approach

Today, 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. Translation teachers have not to provide solution for translation problems but rather have to create the situation in which the students could solve the problems themselves. 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 to the students. They are supposed to 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. However, translation teachers should make it clear to 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. Shifting the students’ focus of attention on the process of translation, translation teachers could possibly reduce the students’ subconscious decisions to the minimum, and thus train translators who consciously make choice and consequently produce translations that are intended to pursue the specific objectives of their translators. 

References

Calzada-Pérez, M. (2003). Introduction. In M. Calzada-Pérez (Ed.) Apropos of Ideology (pp. 1-22). Manchester: St. Jerome.

Chamberlain, L. (1998). Gender Metaphorics in Translation. In M. Baker (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Ttranslation Studies (pp. 93-96). London: Routledge.

Hönig, H. G. (1998). Positions, Power and Practice: Functionalist Approaches and Translation Quality Assessment. In C. Schäffner (Ed.) Translation and Quality (pp. 6-34). Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters.

Karoubi, B. (2005). Ideology and Translation. Retrieved from: www.translationdirectory.com/article233.htm

Mills, S. (2003). Michel Foucault. (pp. 53-66) London: Routledge.