Ressenyes

Index de les obres ressenyades: Arturo PARADA ; Oscar DIAZ FOUCES (eds.), Sociology of Translatio

European Translation Studies, Une science qui dérange, and Why Equivalence Needn’t Be a Dirty Word

European Translation Studies, Une science qui dérange, and Why Equivalence Needn't Be a Dirty Word -Debates about equivalence have marked the development of European translation studies since the 1970s, forming a significant frame for the institutional legitimation of the discipline. A brief survey of these debates, carried out in terms of Bourdieu's defence of sociology as an "upsetting" science, distinguishes between the precarious legitimation of linguistic-based equivalence in the 1970s and several target-side critiques directed at the concept in the 1980s. However, the alternative institutional legitimation associated with the critiques of equivalence may well have been conceptually desintegrative and intellectually mediocre. It is concluded that translation studies could now become properly upsetting by returning to equivalence and considering it as an operative illusion necessary for the definition and social function of any translation.La Traductologie en Europe, Une science qui dérange, et Pourquoi « Équivalence » n'est pas forcément un gros mot - Les débats sur l'équivalence marquent le développement de la traductologie européenne depuis les années 1970 et constituent un cadre important de légitimation institutionnelle de la discipline. Un bref panorama de ces débats est effectué en appliquant à la traductologie les termes que Pierre Bourdieu utilise pour la défense de la sociologie, « une science qui dérange ». Ces débats se caractérisent, d'une part, par la légitimation précaire de l'équivalence linguistique dans les années 1970 et, d'autre part, par une série de critiques de l'équivalence - formulées au cours des années 1980 - dérivant de la priorité accordée aux facteurs cibles. Cependant, il est possible que la légitimation institutionnelle associée aux critiques de l'équivalence ait eu un effet désintégrateur sur la conceptualisation en traductologie et qu'elle ait été intellectuellement médiocre. Pour devenir une science proprement dérangeante, la traductologie pourrait revenir à l'équivalence en la considérant cette fois comme une illusion opératoire nécessaire à la définition et à la fonction sociale de toute traduction

Globalization and the Politics of Translation Studies

Globalization can be seen as a consequence of technologies reducing the costs of communication. This reduction has led both to the rise of English as the international lingua franca and to an increase in the global demand for translations. The simultaneous movement on both fronts is explained by the divergent communication strategies informing the production and distribution of information, where translation can only be expected to remain significant for distribution, and not for production. The fundamental change in the resulting communication patterns is the emergence of one-to-many document production processes, which are displacing the traditional source-target models still used in Translation Studies. Translation Studies might nevertheless retain a set of political principles that could constitute its own identity with respect to globalization. Such principles would be expressed in the national and regional organization of the discipline, in the defense of minority cultures, and in a general stake in cultural alterity. The possible existence of such principles is here examined on the basis of three instances where Translation Studies might address globalization in political terms: the weakness of the discipline in dominant monocultures, the development of an international association of Translation Studies, and political boycotts of translation scholars.Vue comme résultat de l’application des technologies réduisant les coûts reliés aux communications, la mondialisation favorise à la fois le recours massif à l’anglais, lingua franca, et l’accroissement de la demande des traductions. Ce paradoxe apparent s’explique par la dichotomie entre les stratégies de production, d’une part, et les modes de diffusion des informations, d’autre part. Or, c’est la diffusion, et elle seulement, qui donne son caractère pérenne à la traduction. La nouveauté essentielle de la mondialisation est parfaitement illustrée dans la localisation multiple à partir d’un matériau internationalisé (géométrie de l’« un-à-plusieurs »), là où autrefois on travaillait suivant le modèle une source-une cible, encore le plus étudié par la traductologie. La discipline qui étudie la traduction s’organise pourtant autour d’un ensemble de principes politiques qui, tout en restant fidèles au binarisme source-cible, pourraient redéfinir la traductologie dans le contexte mondialisant. Parmi ces principes, relevons l’organisation des formations encadrée par des plans nationaux ou régionaux, la défense des cultures minoritaires, et l’investissement dans l’altérité culturelle. La pertinence même de ces principes est examinée dans les pages qui suivent à la lumière de trois états de fait : le manque relatif de recherches américaines sur la traduction, l’organisation d’une association internationale des traductologues, et le rejet des boycottages nationalistes à l’endroit des chercheurs

Complaint concerning the lack of history in translation histories

It is possible that prose translations of verse actively assisted in the progressive prosification of European Iyrical expression in the nineteenth century. This "prose-effect hypothesis" implies that prose translations did not merely reflect developments in the prose poem, vers libre and poetic prose, but were causally related to these developments. As such, the hypothesis is properly historical in that it identifies a change process, it constructs an explanatory narrative, it is potentially falsifiable on the basis of empirical evidence and it addresses a contemporary problematic (it is pertinent to the position of any translator faced with a choice between verse and prose as target forms). My problem here is not with defending the hypothesis as such, but with explaining its apparent incompatibility with several widely held beliefs according to which nineteenth-century translating was predominantly "Iiteralist", "mimetic" or oriented towards "formal equivalence

Cooperation, risk, trust

Within the general approach known as translator ethics, complementary roles are played by the concepts of cooperation, risk, and trust. Cooperation, as a technical term, describes the attainment of mutual benefits as the desired outcome of an interaction, indeed as the foundation of social life. In translator ethics, the aim is more specifically to enhance long-term cooperation between cultures. The concept of risk is then used to think about the probabilities of that general aim not being obtained and what kinds of strategies and efforts can be employed to avert that outcome by increasing mutual benefits. Trust, finally, characterizes the relationship that translators must have with those around them in order for them to contribute to cooperation, such that the most critical risk they face is that of losing credibility. Together, these concepts are able to address some of the thornier issues in translator ethics and provide a frame for ongoing discussion and research

On cosmopolitan translation and how worldviews might change

CITATION: Pym, A. 2021. On cosmopolitan translation and how worldviews might change. Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus, 61:33-48, doi:10.5842/61-0-918.The original publication is available at https://spilplus.journals.ac.zaThe theorisation of cosmopolitanism can be dated from Kant’s “right to hospitality”, where the reciprocal welcoming of foreigners is supposed to lead to universal understanding. Differences in languages and religions are recognised as obstacles in the way to that ideal, yet Kant has little to say about how to get around their differences – translation is strangely absent. A role for translation in cosmopolitanism nevertheless appears in the discourses that assume an age of effective economic globalisation. The cosmopolitanisms elaborated by Ulrich Beck (2004/2006) and Gerard Delanty (2009), among many others, adopt a sense of cultural translation that requires no anterior text, no language barrier, and thus no mediator: the cosmopolitan becomes an intercultural space where relations transform subjects. Those views may be tested on the narratives of three Afrikaans-speaking intellectuals who recount how they grew up under Apartheid and progressively dissented from totalitarian discourse. The concepts of cosmopolitan translation are found to explain some of the narratives involved, particularly when the self is seen through the eyes of the other, yet strong social and national frames are still in force, boycotts counter hospitality and reinforce national frames, and language translation is found to be relatively unimportant in a milieu of polyglots.https://spilplus.journals.ac.za/pub/article/view/918Publisher's versio