Cronin, Michael

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94 Quaderns. Revista de traducció 1, 1998 First On-Line Colloquium on TranslationHand over Fist?A response to Anthony Pym and Douglas RobinsonMichael CroninDublin City University. IrelandDebates are possible on the assumptionthat the participants are not slaves topositionality (class, race, gender) and thatwe are not simply repeating preordainedinstitutional scripts. If that was the casethen an on-line translation colloquiumwould be void of meaning. It wouldappear to me, however, that in two dif-ferent but related ways, Anthony Pymand Douglas Robinson may in fact fore-close the very debate that they want usto begin. Anthony Pym borrowingHobsbawm’s concept of the «examina-tion-passing classes» suggests that trans-lation theoreticians’ defence of the roleof translation in the maintenance ofnational language is dictated by pure self-interest, «Who wouldn’t want a nationallanguage? More work for us and ourstudents!». There is of course in all ins-titutional strategy an element of self-pro-motion (a point strangely ignored bysome of the less self-reflexive post-modern theorists) but a reductive notionof self-interest is a rhetorical procedurewhose only outcome is silence. To denythe charge of professional egotism is tobe brought before the Higher Court ofthe Unconscious where the more seriouscharge of Repression is leveled againstthe accused (of course you deny you aremotivated by professional self-interest,one of the tricks of hegemony is to pre-tend it does not exist). The self-interestclaim can only invite assent as any otherresponse is evidence of incurable badfaith.Douglas Robinson’s notion of thetranslator as channel has the potential forinducing another form of paralysis, ideo-logical overdeterminedness, that is remi-niscent of the metanarratives of systemand structure in the 60s and 70s whichpromised liberation and delivered power-lessness. «Readers, editors, users, teachersgave us feedback; channeling that feed-back, we were channeling ideology. Our‘helpers’ channeled it to us; we channelit to others». If the «ideosomatics of lan-guage is the voice of social mastery inter-nalized in the workings of our ownbodies» and ideology works at microcos-mic, electrochemical levels then the trans-lator becomes the idle plaything ofideology. She becomes invisible onceagain. Currents of ideology pass throughthis diaphanous creature who once againfinds herself subject to the mastery ofLanguage, Law and Ideology. TheFoucauldian thesis that power is everyw-here can often lead to the sorry conclu-sion that resistance is nowhere (if onlybecause as any progressive critic of natio-nalism will tell you the powerless repro-duce the paradigms of the powerful).Thus, ideological critique which initiallyis powered by a radical, demystificatory,anti-hegemonic impetus can give way toEUTI 1 079-113  16/4/98 11:01  Página 94the fatalism of the panopticon where post-Kantian subjects in a parody of StephenDedalus struggle aimlessly to free them-selves of the nets of Knowledge, Powerand Discourse.Robinson is of course right to under-line the translator’s ideological entangle-ments (though it would have been usefulto have a definition of ideology in thepiece, when I last looked at theories ofideology I found fifteen different defini-tions of ideology), a fact borne out byeven the most cursory examination oftranslation history. However, it appearsto me that the erasure of the subject canin fact be a deeply reactionary move andlead to a depoliticisation of the transla-tion process. The feminist political scien-tist Nancy Hartsock once noted that thepostmodern view that truth and know-ledge are contingent and multiple is initself a truth claim and more importantlythat the claim undermines the ontologi-cal status of the subject at the very timewhen women and non-Western peopleshave begun to claim themselves as sub-ject. This is why Pym in my view iscorrect to stress the intercultural/inter-lingual space of the translator as the posi-tion occupied by the translation subject.Studying translation from the point ofview of the agent, to use Daniel Simeoni’sterm, allows for the possibility of a cer-tain epistemic unity in translation studiesrather than what Simeoni sees as the end-less fragmentation of an object-centred,positivistic notion of translation as scien-ce (Daniel Simeoni, «Translating andStudying Translation: The View from theAgent», META 40/3, 445-460). The eter-nal sourcier/cibliste debates tend to renderthe translator invisible though feministtheories have repeatedly stressed the «posi-tionality» of the translator. A study of thetranslator using some of the conceptualtools of intercultural theories of commu-nication, psychoanalysis and ethnopsy-chiatry could indeed be quite illuminatingfor a theory of translator as interculturalagent. The interlingual space that thetranslator occupies is indeed based on lin-gual separateness but the interlingual canonly exist if there are lingual differencesotherwise it would be a non-sens.Translation does not create differences, itmerely makes them explicit. Rather thanseeing translation as the enemy of theinterlingual, one can argue the opposite,that it is by looking at the social, pys-chological, cultural and linguistic diffi-culties faced by the translator that onecan map out the complexity of that inter-cultural space and draw on the millenialexperience of translators rather than trans-lations in seeking to overcome the pro-blems of intercultural communication. Aproper analysis of this experience couldindeed provide a useful basis for the studyof interlingual spaces that Pym recom-mends for translator training schools inEurope.One of the problems of interculturalcommunication is of course asymmetry.Anthony Pym may argue in his METAarticle that `hegemony, conflict, exploi-tation’ do not infiltrate everything but ininstitutional arrangements they infiltratea great deal. More specifically in his the-ory of translation as a transaction cost,the notion of `mutual benefits’ remainssomewhat nebulous. English speakerstypically see little mutual benefit in trans-lation because they speak a world lan-guage. Any effort invested in translationis seen as wasteful (viz. Sunday Times cri-tique of EU literary translation schemes)and is only grudgingly granted. Themutual benefits to non-dominant lan-guages are much greater but they typi-cally have less political power andtherefore are less able to insist on thenecessary social effort being made to ensu-re a mutually beneficial interaction.Abandoning translation could, rather thanopening up interlingual spaces, lead tounchecked positive feedback where thecumulative benefits of monoglossia forthe linguistically dominant lead to theFirst On-Line Colloquium on Translation Quaderns. Revista de traducció 1, 1998 95EUTI 1 079-113  16/4/98 11:01  Página 95emptying out of the interlingual space.That the `mutual benefits’ for Europe’sweaker languages would approximate tozero would be irrelevant as linguisticinteraction would be seen as primarilydriven by monolingual pragmatism. Thislatter would be seen as the basis of suc-cessful cooperation not the mutual bene-fits to weaker parties. The symbolic (inthe full not the shambolic sense) value oflanguages has a cost that is disproportio-nately high for the powerful and is dis-proportionately important for thepowerless. Costs reflect this asymmetryand are a necessary element in the main-tenance of diversity (language learning isof course another one). One could ofcourse argue that the problem with theEU is not that it is spending too muchmoney on translation but that it spendstoo much money on the wrong kind oftranslation. Pym’s contention that for pro-per appreciation of works of literature inother languages, students should go tothe countries where the literature is pro-duced and immerse themselves in the lan-guage and culture that produced theliterature is eminently sensible. However,it becomes eminently impractical oncethe student has the temerity to readwidely in the literatures of several coun-tries given the inordinate amount of timeit takes to get properly acquainted witha language and culture. For this reason,it is unfortunate that so much of the EUbudget goes on administrative translationwhen the real, long-term needs of the citi-zens of the EU are in the area of literaryand cultural translation, an area that is atpresent woefully underfunded. Are trans-lators master forgers? Is the rise in transla-tion activity to do with a new faith infakes? Spiritual mediums were notoriouslyassociated with fraud in the nineteenthcentury and it would be interesting tospeculate on the link between transla-tion and forgery in this context —themedium and the ego-massage. DouglasRobinson does not mention MichelSerres, yet his work on the angelic tasksof annunciation and communication inLa légende des anges can be usefully rela-ted to Robinson’s own concerns with gui-ding hands and spiritual channels,particularly Serre’s concept of the fallenangels, the messengers who loom largerthan the message (the stars of the massmedia). Are cyborg translators the newseraphs or the mutinous vanguard oftranslators who would be God?96 Quaderns. Revista de traducció 1, 1998 First On-Line Colloquium on TranslationEUTI 1 079-113  16/4/98 11:01  Página 96

Hand over Fist? A response to Anthony Pym and Douglas Robinson

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Hand over Fist? A response to Anthony Pym and Douglas Robinson

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