Translation and Interpreting Studies. The Journal of the American Translation and Interpreting Studies Association - Volume 6, Issue 2, 2011

Definitions of translation studies are changing. While historically focused on the process or product of translation at a national European level, new definitions by scholars such as Mukherjee, Trivedi, Cheung, and Tymoczko are expanding the parameters of translation by exploring how the field is defined in international non-European contexts — in India, China, the Arab world, for example. Other scholars, such as Cronin, Simon, Apter, and Brodzki are looking at subnational locations, including within cities, diasporic communities within cities, and even between generations within individual families in those communities. This paper looks at how translation is defined and studied in such macro- and micro-contexts in the Americas, suggesting that translation is less something that happens between national cultures and more something, especially among immigrants and linguistic minorities, that comprises the very basis upon which those cultures are constructed.

This theoretical case study starts from a brief critical discussion of Eurocentrism in translation studies, underscoring the importance of the efforts toward a more inclusive, truly global and culturally balanced approach to translation which are increasingly being made in our field, often under the banner of “the international turn.” However, the rejection of Eurocentrism leaves open a wide range of alternative models and approaches, and this paper aims to show that the search for alternatives is not without its own difficulties. For example, it might be tempting for non-European scholars to derive an alternative way of thinking about translation from translational practices and discourses in their own continent that appear to be at odds with what is perceived as the “European” model of translation. A post-colonial sensibility would seem to make this an extremely attractive proposition. This is the line of thinking which inspired Edwin Gentzler’s Translation and Identity in the Americas. New Directions in Translation Theory (2008). The paper enters into a critical dialogue with Gentzler’s book in order to argue the general thesis that the replacement of one (perceived) continent-based paradigm by another (perceived) continent-based paradigm is not the best way forward, suffering as it does from a range of methodological problems. The best way to overcome Eurocentrism is not to construct and promote an American continentalism (“translation in the American sense”) as an alternative to it, or any other nationally or continentally defined concept of translation, for that matter.

Conceptualizations of translation are often cast in the literature in terms of sets of hegemonic dualities played out across lines of continuous and perhaps irresolvable dominance and resistance in all areas touched on by translation: language, power, ethnicity, gender, etc. This paper will attempt to trace trajectories of thought and inquiry within Translation Studies in order to discover to which extent certain approaches and models can be considered (strictly) as Western, Eurocentric and hence as propagating a priori such power and other imbalances. In this respect, the article argues for a situated approach to understanding the use of certain analytical concepts in given cultural spaces. It further argues that concepts and models be viewed in combination and in contrast with ethnographic studies of translation practices. It therefore asserts that translational practices should be explored on the ground in order to complement and adjust scholarly conceptualizations of translation in the broadest sense. Ethnographic studies of the field allow us to discover the impact of practices on (or in the construction of) a given cultural space or on other practices visible in the same space. This further helps us explore differences between these practices, along with their theoretical underpinnings, and those held by scholars in the same space. Data drawn from an ethnographic study of literary translators in the Netherlands and Belgium will be used to discuss some of the points outlined above.

This paper deals with the recurrent criticism in Translation studies in general and Anglophone Translation studies in particular that the discipline labors under a ‘Eurocentric’ bias. The author develops two arguments in relation to this. First, the charge of ‘Eurocentrism’ serves a number ends that have less to do with an actual desire to reach out to ‘non-Western’ discourses on translation (although the globalization of the discipline has definitely broadened the scope and concerns of translation scholars) than with a generation gap among translation scholars. Drawing on literature from the last two decades, the author argues that ‘Eurocentrism’ often functions as an asymmetrical counterconcept, in Reinhardt Koselleck’s sense, which allows translation scholars to legitimize their scholarly project by investing it with a sense of urgency and political relevance. In a second step, the author argues that the rhetorical debate over ‘Eurocentrism’ often suffers from an overextension of identity claims, whereby translation processes are reduced to either an imposition of or reaction against hegemonic power structures. This focus on identity, however legitimate, may result in linguistic paternalism. To counteract this negative effect, the author calls for a revalorization of instrumentalist justifications of language use by drawing on linguistic justice theory, arguing that, following recent insights by political philosophers and contrary to the prevalent view held by translation scholars, when it comes to determining a just translation policy, (non-linguistic) instrumental concerns tend to override (intrinsic) identity concerns.

This article discusses agency in translation as conceptualized in recent developments in Translation Studies. As a subtext, it poses the representation of its own data as a methodological problem. The article discusses Donald Strachan as a possible agent of translation, probing the implications of his interpreting and translation work in a border setting in South Africa in the late 1800s. It then juxtaposes this perspective with the translation theory of Edwin Gentzler, who claims that translators are creating cultures by way of their work. From this encounter, the author suggests a number of implications for researching translation in Africa. The paper ends by reflecting on its own subtext.

In his 2008 book, Translation and Identity in the Americas, Edwin Gentzler proposed a “fictional turn” to refer to translation in connection with the construction of identity in the Americas, a highly positive view of the role played by this activity since the arrival of the Europeans. This paper proposes a “fictionalizing twist,” that is, a complementary approach that would attest to the less positive use of translation in the relation between Europe and the Americas on the one hand, and among European nations on the other. Thus, I examine how translation and Translation Studies have contributed to create certain negative images of translators and nations, a tendency that can still be traced nowadays. First, I discuss the views on the indigenous interpreter Malinche and her part in the conquest of Mexico. Then I move on to examine the ideological manipulation of texts to promote antagonistic national identities within the European context at the time. Finally, it is argued that both the fictional turn and the fictionalizing twist need to be considered as an integral part of the identity-construction process in the Americas and in Europe.