Cultural and ideological turns in translation

1. Cultural and ideologicalturns in translation Desiree Trentini Giorgia Bagatti

2. Translation, History and Culture by Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere: • Dismiss the previoustheories. • Focus on the interactionbetweentranslation and culture, on the way in which culture impacts and constrainstranslation and on the largerissue of context, history and convention. • Mary Snell-Hornby: • ‘the cultural turn’: metaphore for this cultural move. • ⟹ itincludes: studies of changingstandards in translation over time, the powerexercised in and on the publishingindustry in pursuit of specificideologies, feministwriting and translation, translationas ‘appropriation’, translation and colonization, translationasrewriting, film rewrites. • We are going to analize: • Translationasrewriting; • Translation and gender; • Translation and postcolonialism.

3. 1) Translationasrewriting • Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame by André Lefevere (1992): • The motivation of suchrewriting can be ideologicalor poetological: e.g.: E. Fitzgerald’stranslation of the Rubayait by Omar Khayyám. • Translationas the mostinfluentialtype of rewriting: it can go beyond the boundaries of the C1. • Literarysystemcontrolled by twomainfactors: • Professionalswithin the literarysystem; • Patronage outside the literarysystem. ‣ ideological component; ‣ economic component; undifferentiatedor diferentiated ‣ status component. • Twocomponents of the dominantpoetics: literarydevicesand the concept of the role of literature. • Keyclaim: interactionbetweenpoetics, ideology and translation. • But the mostimportantconsiderationis the ideologicalone: e.g.: Lysistrata by Aristohpanes. e.g.: The diary of Anne Frank.

4. 2) Translation and gender • Gender in Translation: Cultural Identity and the Politics of Transmissionby Sherry Simon (1996): • Translation by a gender-studies angle. • Sexism in translationstudies (cf. the image of lesbellesinfidèles; Steiner’stranslationaspenetration). • Translationproject: 1980s in Canada ⇾ Barbara Godard. • ConstanceGarnett: classic of Russian literature. • Jean StarrUntermeyer, Willa Muis, Helen Lowe-Porter: classics of Germanliterature. • Suzanne Jill Levine: new work ⇾ Infante’sTres tristestigres. • QueerTheory: issue of language and identity by a cultural-theory angle: • Keith Harvey: extracts from twonovels: • The French translation on Gore Vidal’sThe City and the Pillar. • The translationinto American English of a novel by the Frenchman Tony Duvert.

5. 3) Postcolonialtranslationtheory • The politics of translationby Spivak (1993/2012): bringstogetherfeminist, postcolonialist and poststructuralistapproaches: • Tension: Spivak’sspeaking out against western feminists ⇾translatese. • Power relations Theory: SittingTranslation: History, Poststructuralism, and the ColonialContextby Niranjana (1992): • Asymmetrical relations of poweroperating under colonialism. • Three mainfailings in western translationstudies: • Translationstudieshasnotconsidered the question of powerimbalancebetweendifferentlanguages; • The conceptsunderlyingmuch of western translation are flawed; • The ‘humanisticenterprise’ of translationneeds to be questioned. • Niranjana’srecommendations for action: • The postcolonialtranslation must call intoquestioneveryaspect of colonialism and liberal nationalism; • ‘Interventionist’ approach. • Post-colonialTranslation: Theory and Practiceby S.Bassnett and H. Trivedi (1999): link betweentranslationaland transnational. • HomiBhabha: concepts of in-betweenness, the thirdspace, hybridity, cultural difference.

6. Translation and ideology • Committedapproaches: Brownlie (2009) • Examination of power and ideology in othercontextswheretranslationisinvolved: • Kate Sturge (2004): ideologybehind the selection of texts in Nazi Germany to eliminate ‘allelementsalien to the Germancharacter’. • Disparity of powerbetweenlanguages: asymmetry ⇾ K. Bennett: ‘epistemicide’ caused by the dominance of English scientific and academic style. • Hegemony and prestige of Classic languages: sacredscriptures and scientifictexts. • Translanguaging and Co-existing linguistic communities

7. Case study • The Last Flicker(1991): English translation of GurdialSingh’sPunjabinovelMarhi Da Deeva(1964): • Punjabi and English: long history of British rule in India and imposition of the English languageduringthat time. • Translation by Ajmer S. Rode, a Punjabisettled in Canada. • Translationpromoted by a centralgovernmentorganization and written in the hegemoniclanguage of English • ➾ complexrange of cultural issues. • Engl. translation: mix of registers: archaicinsults, rural life language, modern American expletives and speechmarkers. • The translation of a Punjabiregionalnovel for the international audience willinevitabily involve spatial and cultural dislocation. • Rode hastranslated the regional and social dialect of a small village community with the sociolect of urbanworking-class of North America. • Dislocationtowards the hegemonic Anglo-Saxon culture.

8. summary • The ‘cultural turn’: the movetowards the analysis of translation from a cultural studies angle. • Translationasrewriting: power relations and ideologiesexisting in the patronage and poetics of literary and cultural system. • Translation and gender: femininevisible in translation; translation of gay texts. • Translation and postcolonialism: ‘dislocature’ of texts and translatorsworking in formercolonies of the Europeanpowers or in theirlanguages. • Translation and ideology: ideologicalmanipulation.