Translators’ professional habitus and the adjacent discipline: The case of Edgar Snow

Simeoni’s seminal paper (1998) has spurred many to investigate translators’ habitus, both initial and professional, though fine-grained analysis is lacking. This paper argues that a translator’s professional habitus is highly influenced by the adjacent discipline. With Edgar Snow as an illustrative case, it attempts to explore the influence of journalism on the structuring of Snow’s professional habitus as a translator. An analysis of Snow’s social trajectory and inculcation of journalistic habitus and his translation strategies as a journalist translator, especially those of deletion of ‘telling,’ addition of ‘showing,’ and changing of beginning and ending, demonstrates that Snow’s professional habitus as a translator is obviously affected by his profession as a journalist. The translator’s habitus is a locus revealing a visible embodiment of interdisciplinary influences, and his/her professional habitus is a combination of dispositions of both the profession of translation and the profession of the adjacent discipline.