InContext - Volume 2, Issue 1, 2022

This article reports on the results of online discussions held in February-March 2022 to share different perspectives on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis upon interculturalism. Organized under the title “The Role of Interculturalism in the Time of the COVID-19 Pandemic”, the editors of INContext invited scholars from various academic backgrounds. The aim of this discussion was not to provide practical solutions nor to draw a coherent picture of the current crisis provoked by the pandemic. Rather, it endeavored to test the possibility of analyzing this crisis in terms of interculturalism, thereby seeking the possibility of broadening the approach in general. There has been a large amount of scholarly research on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic upon global community in various academic fields. In order for intercultural studies to make a contribution to this task, it is urgent to encourage active exchange of opinions among those whose academic interests lie in cultural communications and interactions.

This article first summarizes some notable academic discussions on intercultural studies, including politics, education, art, and literature. Comparing the opinions submitted for the discussions is the basis of the present research before drawing any significant academic implications. Among those who provided their opinions through various channels, five scholars were chosen to represent different aspects of the topic: the psychological aspect of the COVID-19 crisis; the implications of cyber literature access for youth education; the efforts of a regional community to maintain its creative spirit in arts and culture; and the crisis of liberalism in international relations. The contribution from these five scholars provided the basis for the case studies presented here and analyzed through an intercultural lens for the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on humanity.

Just as the scope of intercultural studies is shaped and enriched by contributions from many academic fields, the participants in the online discussions cited here also entertain the hope that this article will help INContext shape the agenda in the field of interculturalism and thereby spearhead academic endeavors to include divergent perspectives in the quest to understand humankind and the diverse cultural manifestations which are its reflection.

Online collaborative translation experienced a meteoric rise in the first decade of the 20th century thanks to the affordances provided by the Web 2.0. Two distinct models emerged, solicited and unsolicited models. In the first one, a company or institutions request the help of volunteer or participants with translation tasks. In unsolicited models, fans, activists or different collectives self-organize to start a translation initiative. These practices quickly attracted the attention of the Language Industry after large corporations implemented crowdsourcing models (Google, Facebook or Twitter). Translation providers and tech companies explored collaborative initiatives in a context of exciting possibilities for growth, while it quickly became a serious cause for concern for professional translators and professional associations such as the International Federation of Translators (FIT) or the American Translators’ Association (ATA). As a rapidly growing phenomenon, Translation Studies scholars were quickly drawn to research this emerging set of phenomena. Initially, the main issues that appeared on Translation Studies literature were related to motivation, epistemological/conceptual research, ethics, translator visibility, or the description of existing initiatives. The second decade of the 20th century saw the consolidation of these activities through technological developments and innovative workflows and the expansion to non-profit ventures, while new technology-driven models based on collaborative micro-task approaches emerged, such as “paid crowdsourcing”. By 2020, the number of providers offering translations crowdsourcing has been dramatically reduced. Many start-ups have been absorbed or have disappeared, while non-for-profit models of translation collaboration, such as educational, NGO or activist initiatives continue to grow. This paper offers a critical analysis of the evolution of translation collaboration on the web and potential future directions, as well as a review of existing research trends within Translation Studies. The paper ends with an exploration of potential future research trends and directions in this ever-changing area driven by technological innovation.

The study investigated the hypothesis of normalization and stylistic variation across translators as manifested in the use of lexical bundles between translated and non-translated English literary texts. Normalization is a hypothesis originally proposed as ‘conservatism’ by Baker (1996) which states that the translator tends to conform to linguistic patterns and conventions typical of the target language even to the point of exaggeration, and lexical bundles are sequences of three or four words recurring with high frequency in natural discourse. The study was carried out in two stages. The first stage replicated previous studies that relied on simple frequency tests to confirm the normalization hypothesis. Contrary to these earlier studies, the present study’s frequency tests on lexical bundles failed to provide clear support for the normalization hypothesis. The second stage employed two types of multivariate exploratory analysis, principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), to examine the underlying relationships among individual texts, lexical bundles, and translated and non-translated group categories. Following the failed frequency tests, it was hypothesized here that normalization might be still present in the translated corpus but restricted by types of lexical bundles. PCA confirmed this hypothesis by revealing that normalization occurred in the use of a particular functional type of lexical bundles, called discourse bundles, which are relatively free from the thematic content of the text in which they occur. This ascertains the traditional idea that statistical tests of translation hypotheses must deal with linguistic features unrelated to the thematic content of the corpus. Additionally, PCA revealed variation across the types of lexical bundles preferred by individual translators. HCA further identified the presence of a subgroup of translated texts that cluster with non-translated texts, rather than with their fellow translated texts. This was taken as indicating that the use of lexical bundles varied among the translators and that the division between translated and non-translated texts is not clear-cut.

The fields of disaster studies and crisis communication have been established for a long time. However, the role of translation in these fields has largely been overlooked until recently. A considerable body of research is now emerging that investigates translation as a crisis communication tool. This paper serves to provide a snapshot in time of the progress to date. A brief introduction to the disciplines of disaster studies and crisis communication is provided and crisis translation is situated at the nexus of these two areas. Following from this, the article considers the position of crisis translation in relation to topics of interest to translation studies scholars such as conflict, development, and community translation. Some of the main topics that have received recent attention to date, such as emergency response policy, translation technology, citizen translator training and ethics are then introduced. The lack of recognition of translation as a crisis communication tool in emergency response policies is called out and recommendations for such policies are highlighted. The essential role of volunteers in crisis response and how this relates to translation is discussed, along with the ethical considerations that need to be taken into account. The potential and challenges of translation technology to assist in all stages of crises is then elaborated. Taking a proposal for research directions in disaster studies as the basis, how translation studies can respond to that agenda is briefly considered. It is concluded that translation and interpreting research can contribute to the five ‘guiding principles’ of horizon scanning, interdisciplinarity, ethics, knowledge transfer and impact. Equally, crisis translation can also easily contribute to the five research ‘thrusts’ of justice, risk, habitation zones, data and technology, and infrastructure for humanity. Indeed, the work to date on crisis and translation has already made significant contributions to these topics, but there is considerable potential for further developments.

For comparative case studies, North and South Korea provide political and social theorists with the perfect laboratory to control for factors like language, culture and history due to their near identical conditions in terms of these factors at independence. This research examines and discusses the impact of the social structures and constraints on individual agency that resulted in the aftermath of the nearly 80-year-old division of the Korean peninsula on the cultures of the Koreas. First, section two examines theoretical perspectives on the relationship between structure, culture, and agency to frame our discussion and then focuses on theory of cultural change that most pertains to the North and South Korea we see today following nearly 80 years of nation building. Then, section three examines some indicators of state structures such as coercive capacity, national economy, and political freedom to show the structural disparity between North and South Korea. Institutions are the real world embodiments of structure and these statistics are reflections of the capacity of their relevant institutions to constrain and influence agency. Section four highlights some ways that the numbers from section three have influenced agency in both Koreas over time. Then, section five examines how structure and agency influenced changes in culture in South Korea and North Korea. Section six concludes by offering some thoughts on the implications of the findings.

This article contributes to the literature in two respects. First, it engages in a nuanced discussion of agency and structure not by simple dichotomy but by showing the mutual interplay between the two on the Korean peninsula. Second, in terms of structure and agency, it compares North and South Korea according to several indices while providing a comprehensive and deep interpretation of the two Koreas’ social and cultural evolution to non-Korean readers.

After four years of physical struggle and diplomacy, Indonesia’s independence was officially recognized, and its sovereignty transferred on 27 December 1949. While protracted struggle and sacrifice to obtain independence had galvanised the people around an idea of Indonesia, this shared experience and political victory could not provide the sole points of reference for the social and cultural transformation necessary to engender national unity. In this article, I engage three conflicting yet ultimately overlapping arguments and positions, each one positing a modern artistic subjectivity and perspectives of an Indonesian modern art. At stake was not only participation in constructing a national identity, and giving meaning and expression to an amorphous keIndonesiaan (Indonesian-ness), but also related issues of creative freedom and the role art and artists would play in its formation.

Regardless of their ideological differences, the positions discussed here share a common commitment to the nation and its future, and the conviction that the revolution remained incomplete—having achieved its political but not its social and cultural aims. This includes arguments of a complex figure of a new man/humanity. Here, I argue a construct of artistic subjectivity in which connotations of truth and authenticity are posited as aspects of a specific aesthetic identification within the discourse and construction of Indonesianness. The intellectual horizons under discussion were simultaneously egalitarian and elitist. Media and mediation played key roles in the dissemination of such arguments of modern artistic subjectivity.

I keep my case studies specific to ideas put forward by artists and writers publicized roughly between the years 1950 to 1955. During this brief period, just prior to the first national elections, the arts experienced a kind of democratization, and can be considered among the freest and most dynamic in terms of the relationship between art, politics and nationalism, between artists and the state.

Adapting Shakespeare’s literary works for incorporation into Japanese popular culture has been an act of intercultural translation. Shakespeare and Japanese popular culture, particularly manga (Japanese graphic novels), could be seen as cultural polarities: the West vs. the East, as represented by Japan, a contrast between high culture and pop culture, the canonical vs. the lowbrow. Yet Shakespeare’s works as adapted in manga format do, as this article argues, problematize such hierarchical distinctions. Shakespeare found in manga can be both a challenge and a tribute to his authority, giving him a global and intercultural after-life. The first group of Japanese manga with Shakespearean motifs dates back to the early 20th century. Similar efforts have since continued through to the early 21st century, making manga with Shakespearean motifs a conspicuous, widespread phenomenon as part of Japanese pop culture. The greatest recent contribution in this regard is the Manga Shakespeare Series. Published by a British publishing house, it helped to turn manga into an important vehicle for the intercultural translation of Shakespeare.

This article aims at placing into perspective Shakespeare and his presence in Japanese pop culture in general and in Japanese manga in particular. Specifically, efforts will be made to introduce Japanese manga with Shakespearean motifs as a genre and show how it has become a representative intercultural art collaboration form. Western graphic novels with Shakespeare incorporated will be contrasted with Japanese manga, including Classics Illustrated, to see different levels of faithfulness to one of the world’s greatest writers.

The fidings indicate that while Western graphic novels tend to show a higher levels of faithfulness to the original works, Japanese manga takes greater liberty with Shakespeare. This suggests that manga with Shakespearean motifs should be viewed not as debasement of his literary authority but as creative innovation. Rather than trying to remain strictly faithful to Shakespeare’s original works, efforts should be made to identify previously overlooked aspects of Shakespeare’s works and expand the possibility of making the most of his legacy in enriching the human culture through hybridization and glocalization.