Translation and Interpreting Studies. The Journal of the American Translation and Interpreting Studies Association - Volume 7, Issue 2, 2012

The last few years have seen a great increase in works on what has been labeled a “sociological turn” in translation studies. This turn has particularly taught us to sharpen our “sociological eye” on the various agencies and agents involved in any translation procedure, and more specifically in the textual factors operating in the translation process. In this paper I will discuss the conditions underlying the “sociological turn” and examine both its limitations and its potential, with particular attention to the translator’s habitus as elaborated in sociology and in translation studies. My focus will be on the political factors which in recent years have contributed to molding the habitus, not least in the domain of “translation and activism,” where new codes of reference have been created for translatorial activity that also pose searching questions for Western concepts of translation and their social implications, ultimately triggering what might be called an “activist turn.”

Against the backdrop of the British mandatory rule of Palestine (1917–1948), Socialist and Revisionist factions struggled bitterly over the character of the new Israeli culture/nation in the making. Crucial ideological differences intermingled with violent fights over topical problems such as whether resistance to British rule should be violent or subdued and how to face growing Arab aggression. The struggle intensified during World War II when the Socialist Zionist camp, headed by Ben-Gurion, backed the British in the war against Nazi Germany. This camp eventually won, as we know, and dissidents found themselves not only jobless but unable to obtain employment in public office. As a result, many Revisionists turned to the private book industry, becoming translators, editors, and publishers. This essay will describe the conditions that led to this choice and will analyze the options left for Revisionist intellectuals rejected by the mainstream. It will then describe them as a far from homogenized sociopolitical group, analyze their various habituses, then present particular examples of participants in the alternative book industry. It will try to find a correlation between their sociopolitical ideology and their professional behavior. Cases of ex-dissidents that found a way into the mainstream will also be presented. Using a diachronic approach, this article will attempt to sum up their contribution, as well as the effects of the strife (schism, in fact) on Hebrew culture that this work represents. Finally, this article will attempt to incorporate these findings within the framework of the sociological turn, problematizing the application of Bourdieu’s habitus and field theories to the study of translation.

With the ascension to power of the Abbasid dynasty in 750 CE and the transfer of the capital of the Muslim Empire to the newly-created city of Baghdad, the middle of the eighth century heralded an era that in Islamic history is referred to as the “Golden Age,” during which period the Muslim world became an unrivaled intellectual center for science, philosophy, medicine, and education. Approximately eighty years after the dynasty’s rise to power, the Abbasid Caliph (ruler) al-Ma’mun (d. 833 CE) established in Baghdad Bayt al-Hikma (the House of Wisdom), an educational institution where Muslim and non-Muslim scholars together sought to gather the world’s knowledge not only via original writing but also through translation. Probably the most well-known and industrious translator of the era was Hunayn ibn Ishaq (d. 873 CE), known in the West by the Latinized name “Joannitius.” Referred to as “the sheikh of the translators,” he is reported to have mastered the four principal languages of his time: Greek, Syriac, Persian, and Arabic. Hunayn is credited with an immense number of translations, ranging from works on medicine, philosophy, astronomy, and mathematics, to magic and oneiromancy. This article looks at Hunayn’s work, briefly places this key figure within the translatorial habitus, discusses his methodology towards translation, as described in his own works, and examines that methodology in light of the sociological and sociolinguistic factors of the time.

The field of translation is a battleground on which, according to Bourdieu, cultural reproducers compete over cultural capital synonymous with higher social status and greater power to control texts and attribute meaning to them. On the surface, the struggles are about defending ideas and satisfying tastes, but they are also about how to control cultural capital and how to eventually convert it into economic capital. Against this background, this article explores the issue of retranslation of classic texts, using Bourdieu’s sociological concepts to analyze why The Art of War is frequently chosen for retranslation, how a challenging translator qualifies himself as someone more capable than his predecessors of doing full justice to the classic text, and, more importantly, what strategies are used to compete against the most respected translators in so doing. The article concludes that retranslating classic texts is a social practice whereby individual translators are inclined to use as their common strategy all kinds of cultural capital (embodied, objectified, and institutionalized) to outmatch the competition not merely within textual practice but also well beyond it.

Following its translation into more than thirty languages, Roberto Saviano’s non-fiction novel Gomorrah [Gomorra], has unveiled to a vast number of readers across the globe the endless saga of Naples’ crime syndicate, the Camorra (from which the book’s title derives its bitter play on words). Literary critics and reviewers in the UK and in the U.S. have widely acclaimed Saviano’s talent in depicting the corruption plaguing Naples’ gloomy and degraded hinterland, although the sociocultural context portrayed in Gomorrah is naturally distant from the repertoire of the target culture: the text is widely populated by culture-bound concepts and implicit meanings, which further complicates the translation process. Through a contrastive analysis of the Italian and English versions of the exposé, this study explores the strategies employed in translating the voices and deeds of Naples’ mobsters, as well as the socioeconomic setting of the Camorra. With reference to types of non-equivalence between the two language versions, this article investigates to what extent the English translation contributes to the identity-building process of the Camorra as a separate and far more deadly criminal organization vis-à-vis the Sicilian Mafia.

This article focuses on the occupational status of translators in international organizations. It reports on an empirical study on the job status of Danish staff translators working in the European Union as compared to that of Danish staff translators working in the national market. The study is based on data from questionnaires completed by 63 EU translators and 113 national-market translators, i.e., a total of 176 respondents. The translators’ perceptions of their occupational status were studied and compared through their responses to questions revolving around four parameters of occupational prestige: (1) remuneration, (2) education and expertise, (3) power and influence, and (4) visibility. Based on the literature, we hypothesized that the EU translators would enjoy a higher status than the national-market translators — a hypothesis which the study failed to confirm. In the article, the analyses and findings of the study are discussed, along with the possible reasons for the lack of alignment between the hypothesis and the results.

The traditional view holds that professional interpreters should be transparent, invisible, passive, neutral, and detached, a view reiterated and reinforced in the prescribed interpreters’ codes of conduct of national and international professional organizations. Such an idealized role construct, however, is from time to time deconstructed in real-life face-to-face interpreting events. In this paper, face-to-face interpreting is seen as a three-way communicative event in which the interpreter is a co-constructor of the interaction and can therefore be a powerful figure. From the perspective of interpreting as a socially-situated activity, the paper adopts Michel Foucault’s concept of power, defining it not as the traditionally dominating force to monopolize, control, or rule, but as a kind of strategy, disposition, maneuver, tactic, or technique, functioning in a network of relations. Although interpreters often lack institutional power, they may be equipped with power within the exchange as a result of their bilingual and bicultural expertise. They may exercise this power by adopting various verbal and non-verbal strategies to negotiate, coordinate, check, and balance power relations. This can be specifically manifested in interpreters’ social action as co-interlocutors, empowerment figures, or in the adoption of a non-neutral stance. Examples are cited from authentic interpreting events to analyze interpreters’ power-at-work, focusing on their verbal and non-verbal behaviors, in particular, their positioning and gaze.