Kate Sturge challenges the reader, in her paper ‘The Other on Display’, to view the ethnographic museum as a translation process. In this case, once again, as it happens with feminist approaches, the idea of translation is stretched beyond what is perceived as ‘translation proper’, or interlingual translation, as it was defined by Jakobson, and is reflected in the strategies she proposes further on in the study (1959:233). She invites the reader, therefore, to view the curator as the translator of an old narrative into the language of today.
Sturge makes an analogy between the artifacts displayed in traditional museums and the interlinear, prescriptive approach on translation: the objects are displaced from their time and their context, and seen as entities exiting in a sort of ‘arrested development’ (3), ‘talking’ to the target reader in a familiar, domesticating language. Thus a pot is not an object that once used to store liquids, it is an artifact made from a certain type of clay and belonged to a certain trend of painting flowers on it.
She argues further on that this Victorian approach is outdated and, even worse, in some cases denigrating for the cultures represented by artifacts in these museums, and proposes two methods that would put the source and the translator on display, getting rid in the same time of the colonial, imperialistic ways in which the objects have been presented so far. One is the use of ‘thick translation’, that is, ‘translation heavily glossed and annotated to enable engagement with the original’s complexity’ (p.5). This would require use of multimedia materials, booklets and catalogues, but would enable the reader to become aware of the fact that translation shouldn’t be taken for granted, that there is an intermediary who enables the access to the old culture, and that culture is more than a piece of jewelry or clothing.
The other method is called ‘reflexive translation’, that is, ‘gearing the whole structure of a gallery to the histories of collection’ (7). This method would employ a ‘put oneself on the map’ type of strategy: the Western culture would be emphasized by the display of the artifacts, not the exotic.
I believe this is an interesting case of postcolonial – ethnographic cross-disciplines study, that shows how the classical view of the original-copy dichotomy can be broken or reversed. It would be interesting to see, if these methods are going to be applied increasingly in the future, what the reader response might be and how they would understand these changes.
References:
Jakobson, Roman (1959): 'On Linguistic Aspects of Translation', R. A. Brower (ed.) On Translation, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Sturge, Kate (2003): 'The Other on Display: Translation in the Ethnographic Museum'
Thursday 17 June 2010
Response Paper to 'Reconceptualizing Translation Theory’ by Maria Tymoczko
In her paper ‘Reconceptualizing Translation Theory’, Maria Tymoczko mainly argues for the broadening of the Translation Studies field by including non-Western and marginal Western thinking, in order to get a panoramic view of the field and set the basis of a translation theory that would account all forms and traditions throughout the world. Her approach stems from postcolonial studies, and acts as a reaction to the hegemony of the West imposed on the rest of the world, and against the ‘positivist framework’ and the ‘generalized and prescriptive discourse’ (14) of the current trends.
In order to be able to build new foundations in reconceptualizing translation theory, the main assumptions drawn from Western thinking must be first deconstructed. As such, Tymoczko puts forth the most common myths of contemporary thinking on translation. The most notorious are: translators seen solely as professionals with degrees or special training, or acting as mediators between two cultures who never happen to be plurilingual; translations which involve only written texts, and most of the time these texts are taken for granted as the Western canon – drama, epic and lyric- the rest being left outside; objects of study in TS are already defined, and therefore are supposed to stay forever encrypted in their crystallized form; the lines between the source and the target texts are settled for good, with a few minor disagreements. These assumptions are taken for granted in the contemporary TS mainstream thinking, and Tymoczko argues that changes must be done in order to establish a solid basis for a universal accepted translation theory.
Her suggestions in overcoming the miss-outs encountered mainly involve acknowledging various traditions from outside the Western canon, like oral cultures and their type of texts, different than the canonized ones, being aware of the existence of multilingualism and multiculturalism, and recognizing translational activity beyond professionalism.
Further on the author proposes three modes of cultural interface that would hold back the ‘Eurocentric stereotypes of translation’ (27) and prevent non-Western cultures to assimilate these canonized paradigms and concepts that exist through English terminology, and which might eventually end up as the ultimate hegemonic prototypes. These modes are ‘transmission’, seen as symbolic transfer of material across cultures, ‘representation’, which would both construct and symbolically substitute the image of an object into the target culture, and transculturation, or ‘the transmission of cultural characteristics from one cultural group to another’ (28).
Tymoczko constructs in a short paper very ample and well structured arguments which both denounce Eurocentrism and Western hegemony and come with solutions for preventing this tendency to fully occur. I would argue that her idea of reconceptualizing translation theory is a step forward into the TS field that would facilitate cultures with traditions in translation to make their strategies and methods well-known.
References:
Tymoczko, Maria (2006): Reconceptualizing Translation Theory. Integrating Non-Western Thought about Translation, in Hermans, T. (Eds),Translating Others: Volume 1, St. Jerome Publishing, UK: Manchester
In order to be able to build new foundations in reconceptualizing translation theory, the main assumptions drawn from Western thinking must be first deconstructed. As such, Tymoczko puts forth the most common myths of contemporary thinking on translation. The most notorious are: translators seen solely as professionals with degrees or special training, or acting as mediators between two cultures who never happen to be plurilingual; translations which involve only written texts, and most of the time these texts are taken for granted as the Western canon – drama, epic and lyric- the rest being left outside; objects of study in TS are already defined, and therefore are supposed to stay forever encrypted in their crystallized form; the lines between the source and the target texts are settled for good, with a few minor disagreements. These assumptions are taken for granted in the contemporary TS mainstream thinking, and Tymoczko argues that changes must be done in order to establish a solid basis for a universal accepted translation theory.
Her suggestions in overcoming the miss-outs encountered mainly involve acknowledging various traditions from outside the Western canon, like oral cultures and their type of texts, different than the canonized ones, being aware of the existence of multilingualism and multiculturalism, and recognizing translational activity beyond professionalism.
Further on the author proposes three modes of cultural interface that would hold back the ‘Eurocentric stereotypes of translation’ (27) and prevent non-Western cultures to assimilate these canonized paradigms and concepts that exist through English terminology, and which might eventually end up as the ultimate hegemonic prototypes. These modes are ‘transmission’, seen as symbolic transfer of material across cultures, ‘representation’, which would both construct and symbolically substitute the image of an object into the target culture, and transculturation, or ‘the transmission of cultural characteristics from one cultural group to another’ (28).
Tymoczko constructs in a short paper very ample and well structured arguments which both denounce Eurocentrism and Western hegemony and come with solutions for preventing this tendency to fully occur. I would argue that her idea of reconceptualizing translation theory is a step forward into the TS field that would facilitate cultures with traditions in translation to make their strategies and methods well-known.
References:
Tymoczko, Maria (2006): Reconceptualizing Translation Theory. Integrating Non-Western Thought about Translation, in Hermans, T. (Eds),Translating Others: Volume 1, St. Jerome Publishing, UK: Manchester
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