Journal of Language and Politics - Volume 11, Issue 2, 2012

While the growing ubiquitousness of translation and interpreting has established these activities more firmly in the public consciousness, the extent of the translators’ and interpreters’ contribution to the continued functioning of cosmopolitan and participatory postmodern societies remains largely misunderstood. This paper argues that the theorisation of translation and interpretation as social phenomena and of translators/interpreters as agents contributing to the stability or subversion of social structures through their capacity to re-define the context in which they mediate constitutes a recent development in the evolution of the discipline. The consequentiality of the mediators’ agency, one of the most significant insights to come out of this new body of research, is particularly evident in situations of social, political and cultural confrontation. It is contended that this conceptualisation of agency opens up the possibility of translation being used not only to resolve conflict and tension, but also to promote them. Through a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches, the contributing authors to this special issue explore a number of sites of linguistic and cultural mediation across a range of institutional settings and textual/interactional genres, with particular emphasis on the contribution of translation and interpreting to the genealogy of conflict. The papers presented here address a number of overlapping themes, including the dialectics of governmental policy-making and translation, the interface between translation, politics and the media, the impact of the narrative affiliation of translators and interpreters as agents of mediation, the frictional dynamics of interpreter-mediated institutional encounters and the dynamics of identity negotiation.

This article examines the function and perception of public service interpreting provision in contemporary Britain against the backdrop of conflict that has emerged in media and political circles as a result of the spiralling cost of such provision. Using an approach based on critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 2000, 2003; Fowler 1991) the article begins by examining a corpus of media reports in which the twin societal aims of community cohesion and integration are often seen as being hindered by translation and interpreting services. The issue of whether interpreting services play or should play a role in integration and cohesion amidst the ongoing processes of welfare reform in Britain is then examined and contrasted with a broader understanding of welfare that foregrounds the role of public service interpreting in the processes of resettlement and socialisation. The discussion also considers the relationship between public service interpreting, welfare reform and status of language services as a welfare entitlement for new entrants.

This article investigates the application of Kim’s (2001) theory of communication and cross-cultural adaptation to identifying and resolving areas of conflict in mental health interpreting in Ireland and, by extension, in the wider field of community interpreting. In the context of Kim’s theoretical framework, the interpreter is the ‘stranger,’ a newcomer who undergoes a cross-cultural adaptation process in an unfamiliar environment, i.e. the host community. Potential areas of conflict in community interpreting in general and mental health interpreting in particular are examined in connection with the interrelated factors that underpin Kim’s structure and process models. It is argued that these factors also provide a framework for the mapping of conflict prevention and resolution in community interpreting. Kim’s theory is further extended to examine the complexity of potential conflict between all participants in interpreter-mediated encounters as well as possible prevention and resolution strategies.

This paper uses concepts from socio-narrative theory, particularly the notions of ‘narrator’ and ‘temporary narrator’, and a revised typology of narrative to examine how eyewitness accounts of the Beslan hostage-taking were incorporated into some of the news narratives constructed in response to the event. Using online articles published in both Russian and English by three different websites, the study considers the few eyewitnesses who are selected to narrate, and ways in which each website controls the sometimes contradictory, multivalent narratives of its eyewitnesses so that they reinforce, rather than challenge or undermine, its overall narrative position. It also considers the impact of translation on these processes and concludes that in translation, the contribution of these eyewitness accounts is further diminished and even removed altogether.

This paper examines aspects of political ideology as realised through translation in the context of a case study, the translations of the Roadmap Plan. The Roadmap is one of several peace plans or initiatives that have been launched in the last decades to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Originally drafted in English in 2003 by the Quartet, the plan was subsequently translated into Arabic and Hebrew by different institutions and news media. This paper begins by examining the textual profiles of the different Arabic and Hebrew versions, focusing on their functions and principles of audience design. This study then moves on to establish how ideological factors inform translational choices as well as the interpretation of translated texts by readers. The main body of the analysis, informed by concepts and methods of descriptive translation studies and critical discourse analysis, focuses on the translator’s mediation of proper names (including protagonists of the conflict and toponyms); instances of deliberately ambiguous or vague drafting; and politically sensitive terms (e.g. ‘normalisation’ or ‘curfew’). The concluding section accounts for the findings of the analysis in terms of the social, political, and ideological constraints shaping the different language versions of the document under scrutiny.

Translation has played a major role alongside original literature in each of the South African languages in aiding the construction of their cultural and literary identities. Because of apartheid (literally, ‘apartness’), Afrikaans carried a political burden and literary authors in this language were considered the protectors of Afrikaner cultural and national identity. After outlining the historical origins and the consolidation of apartheid, this paper charts the emergence of a versetliteratuur (‘protest literature’) movement among disillusioned Afrikaans authors during the apartheid era. Growing censorship and the first banning of an Afrikaans novel under the 1974 Publications and Entertainment Act led to translation and self-translation (into English) being used as a tool of resistance by Afrikaans writers against the ideology of apartheid. The paper moves on to explore the effects of apartheid-imposed conflict on other authors such as South African authors writing in English. It then focuses on the ideological agenda informing the language policy-makers’ and Africanists’ selection of books to be translated into African languages, as part of the government’s attempts to promote mother tongue education in African schools and thus perpetuate the segregation of black South Africans. The concluding section discusses how changes in political life since 1990 have influenced the use of translation in South African literature.