SITUACIÓN ACTUAL

translation studies

Rosemary Arrojo

An important consequence of the expansion of translation as a professional activity in the aftermath of World War II has been the institutionalization of translation studies as the new academicfield formally devoted to translation scholarship and translator training that began opening up spaces in universities worldwide in the 1970s. As the scholarly founda- tion for the study of translation and broadly understood as a certain view or perspective on the complex issues raised by the translator’s activity, translation theory is not merely relevant for the area, but practically indistinguishable from the very discipline of translation studies.

Traditionally, the far-reaching implications of the translator’s activity for cultural con- tact and the insights it brings into the workings of language, as well the relationships it fosters between originals and their versions, authors and readers, or the foreign and the domestic, have attracted the attention of severalfields such as rhetoric, literary studies, lin- guistics, theology, anthropology and philosophy. In the West, and over the course of at least 20 centuries, this interest in translation and its dilemmas has produced a substantial assort- ment of theoretical statements that have been considered more or less relevant in different contexts and circumstances. Furthermore, the wider dissemination of non-essentialist, anti- Platonic views of language and their re-articulation of the relationship usually imagined between subject and object, which began re-orienting the humanities in the last decades of the twentieth century, has brought new perspectives on the work done by translators and their role in the actual construction (and not mere reproduction) of texts, authors, identities, traditions and paradigms. Due to the increasing awareness of the productive role of trans- lators, translation theory has become pivotal for the humanities in general, producing groundbreaking scholarship in interfaces with areas such as cultural studies, postcolonial and subaltern studies, gender studies, philosophy, sociology, comparative literature, and history (see, for example, Bachmann-Medick 2009).

At the same time, just as translation scholarship has gained relevance within these areas, a relevance that has made it increasingly difficult to maintain traditional academic boundaries, the richness brought about by the new theoretical developments cannot be ignored by translation studies, particularly if we consider its mission to train professional translators. To the extent that theory and practice are traditionally viewed as clearly

separable opposites, the incorporation of theory into teaching is certainly a major challenge, one that is complicated by the fact that translators are not usually required to have any formal academic training in order to become professionals and, thus, often tend to see theory as irrelevant. In this scenario it is fundamental that we rethink the opposition andfind ways to bridge the usual gap that separates practice from what is generally called theory.

Constructing theories and their relevance

As Douglas Robinson observes in the editor’s preface to Western Translation Theory: From Herodotus to Nietzsche, his anthology has come out in the midst of‘an astonishing translation theory boom’, which has not only ‘revolutionized the field … but has gener- ated a spate of English-language translation theory anthologies where there were none before’ (1997: xvii). Before the 1990s there were just three anthologies available in English, all of them released by European presses: Thomas R. Steiner’s English Translation Theory, 1650–1800 (1975) and André Lefevere’s Translating Literature: The German Tradition from Luther to Rosenzweig (1977), both by the Dutch-based Van Gorcum; and Andrew Chesterman’s Readings in Translation Theory (1989), published in Finland. In the 1990s, as issues of translation began to attract a larger audience, a few more anthologies appeared, this time put forth by publishers with a broader international reach: Rainer Schulte and John Biguenet’s Theories of Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida (1992) by the University of Chicago Press, and a second collection edited by Andre Lefevere, Translation, History, Culture: A Sourcebook (1992), this time for the Routledge series on translation studies, the general editors of which were Lefevere himself and Susan Bassnett. By 2000, when thefirst edition of Lawrence Venuti’s The Translation Studies Reader was released, the study of translation had already become an internationally recognized area of scholarship.

The expansion of translation studies as an international discipline would not have been possible without the strategic selection and wide dissemination of a repertoire of docu- ments addressing translation issues from different ages and perspectives that could serve as its historical and scholarly basis. By briefly following a few paths through the maze of anthologies mentioned above, we can gain some access into the actual construction of translation studies as a discipline, of which they have been an important part. As André Lefevere remarks in the preface to his 1977 anthology, traditions do not merely‘arise’, but are, in fact,‘consciously shaped and established by a number of people who share the same, or at least analogous, goals over a number of years, decades, or even centuries’ (1977: 1). Lefevere refers, of course, to the assortment of documents produced by an array of intel- lectuals from different ages and backgrounds who shared the same mother tongue and an interest in questions of language and translation, an assortment that we now associate with‘the German tradition’.

If we radicalize Lefevere’s view of tradition as an historical construction that does not simply‘arise’ on its own, we can also argue that his early anthology has played a funda- mental role in establishing what is now known as German translation theory throughout the Anglo-American academic world and in the contexts that have had access to and been influenced by his work. It is also important to note that his anthology was one of the first books to appear in the first series devoted to the then brand new discipline, and which was published by Van Gorcum under the leadership of James S. Holmes, almost unan- imously recognized as one of the founding fathers of translation studies. The fact that the same publisher released Lefevere’s anthology just a couple of years after T.R. Steiner’s

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English Translation Theory 1650–1800 (1975) also suggests that the series and those asso- ciated with it were not only determined to build a scholarly basis for the discipline, but also inclined to identify it almost exclusively with Western European literature and thought.

Both as the editor in charge of selecting and introducing the pieces for the anthology and as their translator, Lefevere was instrumental in transforming into canonical translation theory documents that had not necessarily been designed as such, and in incorporating them into the repertoire of relevant readings for the discipline, at least in the Anglo-American academic context of the 1970s. In order to catch at least a glimpse into this process, we can look briefly, for example, into Lefevere’s choice of Martin Luther as the figure that opens his anthology. After a brief introduction, Lefevere offers his reader a short compilation of fragmented excerpts from Luther’s ‘Circular Letter on Translating’, published in 1530, and originally written as a response to two questions he had received from a friend who was a priest in Nuremberg and to whom he addressed his responses: why he had added a word to his translation of Paul’s discourse in Romans 3:28, and whether the dead saints pray for us or not (1977: 2). The few fragments from the‘Letter’ included in the collection are obviously from Luther’s answer to the first one of those questions, but what Lefevere chooses to emphasize about them in his comments is actually more revealing than the excerpts themselves. For Lefevere, Luther’s relevance for the discipline seems to be mostly associated with his historical role as the widely known Bible translator who, nevertheless, has something to say to those interested in translation in the 1970s, such as the bringing up of‘the perennial ills that the translator is heir to: he is badly paid, his work can easily be stolen from him… and passed off as someone else’s, and he is beset by ignorant and irrelevant criticism’ (1977: 7).

A decade and a half later, Lefevere published his second anthology, Translation, History, Culture: A Sourcebook, which was released by Routledge as part of its translation studies series edited by Lefevere himself together with Susan Bassnett. In comparison with the first one, the scope of this collection is much broader as it includes texts produced ‘over centuries of thinking about translation in Western Europe in Latin, French, German, and English’ (1992: xiii). At the time of its publication, translation studies had already achieved considerable visibility within academic institutions: a variety of new translation programmes had been created worldwide and specialized publications in the area had begun to multi- ply everywhere. The discipline, ‘a success story of the 1980s’, as Bassnett and Lefevere refer to it in their‘general preface’ to the series, was finally beginning to fulfil its promise, and both Bassnett and Lefevere were among its leading figures. In fact, in Lefevere’s treatment of Luther in his 1992 collection’s opening chapter – on ‘the role of ideology in the shaping of a translation’ – we will find a significant reflection not only of the growth of translation studies as a discipline but, also, of Lefevere’s own influence as a scholar, theoretician, translator and editor.

Considering the second collection’s wider scope and the range of texts involved, this time Lefevere has even less space to devote to his selected authors, a constraint that makes what he chooses to emphasize about each of them even more revealing. The two excerpts from Luther’s ‘Letter’ included in the second anthology are slightly different versions of the translations Lefevere had published in thefirst, but the main difference involving them lies in what they are supposed to illustrate. In the 1992 collection the focus of his gloss is Luther’s description of ‘a successful attempt at ideological control’, a description Lefevere finds in the short extract from the ‘Letter’ in which Luther explains how his version of the New Testament was banned and then stolen by a‘scribbler’ who nevertheless managed to have it published under his own name with the help of powerful allies (Lefevere 1992: 14).

As Lefevere clarifies in his succinct introduction to the chapter, Luther’s ‘Letter’ exemplifies how ideology is‘often enforced by the patrons, the people or institutions who commission or publish translations’ (ibid.). While in the 1977 anthology Luther’s text is discussed in much broader terms, which are compatible with the framework of Lefevere’s modest goal – an attempt ‘to outline the development of the tradition of translating literature in Germany’ (1977: 2) – in the second collection its function is apparently to epitomize key theoretical notions that are often directly associated with Lefevere’s own work, such as patronage, rewriting and manipulation.

In fact, these same notions, which are the object of another book Lefevere also published in 1992 (Lefevere 1992a), are treated as the general paradigm that defines and guides translation studies in the Routledge series headed by Lefevere and Bassnett. As they make explicit in their editors’ preface, ‘through the concepts of rewriting and manipulation’, this series ‘aims to tackle the problem of ideology, change and power in literature and society and so assert the central function of translation as a shaping force’ (1992: xi–xii). To the extent that it is also interested in the discipline’s own ‘genealogy’, the series will ‘publish texts from the past that illustrate its concerns in the present, and will publish texts of a more theoretical nature immediately addressing those concerns, along with case studies illustrating manipulation through rewriting in various literatures’ (ibid.). Clearly, the discipline to which Lefevere and Bassnett refer above is a much stronger institution than it could have been in the 1970s when he published hisfirst anthology, and these differ- ences are both a consequence and a reflection of the authority that by then had already empowered its leading figures to reconstruct and re-evaluate past theories, define what was relevant in the present, and even try to influence the future, often in the name of the discipline itself.

In spite of attempts such as Bassnett and Lefevere’s to define and establish a single leading paradigm for the discipline, the growing proliferation of translation scholarship that began to gain visibility at the turn of the century has both produced and reflected an increasing diversity among the theoretical perspectives put forth and disseminated world- wide, a diversity that is a welcoming symptom of the area’s vitality and the wide interest it has summoned. However, in spite of the multiplicity of approaches that have been asso- ciated with translation studies in recent years, one of the many theoretical trends pursued in the area has mobilized an increasing number of scholars in the last two decades, produ- cing a wealth of scholarship both inside and outside the academic boundaries of the dis- cipline. I refer to the cluster of theoretical developments that have been proposed on the basis of what Lefevere and Bassnett call‘the central function of translation as a shaping force’ in the preface quoted above, and which can be directly related to non-essentialist notions of language and the subject usually associated with post-Nietzschean thought. Lawrence Venuti’s writings on the translator’s (in)visibility are probably the best-known examples of such developments (see, for example, Venuti 2008).

Appropriately, once again, in order to illustrate this theoretical trend, we can return to Luther’s ‘Letter’ for yet another glimpse into the complex process of theory and discipline building outlined above. This time we will be paying a short visit to Robinson’s intro- duction to Luther in Western Translation Theory: From Herodotus to Nietzsche (1997), in which he enthusiastically highlights the seminal role played by Luther’s Bible translations in the shaping of German as a literary language. For Robinson, this role is directly asso- ciated with Luther’s ‘reader-orientation’ – his ‘most important contribution to translation theory’ – which reveals a conception of language that seems to have a lot in common with contemporary views. As Robinson claims, when Luther formulates‘the standard principle’

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that translations should use the everyday language of the people on the streets,‘he doesn’t idealize or objectify language… Instead he personalizes it, humanizes it, blends it with the vitality of his own sense of self’ (1997: 84–5). This approach is precisely the ‘principle’ Robinson adopts in his version of the long excerpt from the ‘Letter’ he selects for the collection, recreating Luther’s text in a contemporary brand of lively, informal American English that relies heavily on slang and colloquialisms, and which constitutes a powerful illustration of the translator’s undeniable visibility in the process of translation. This lesson on the interventionist power of translation as a textual practice that recreates and redefines the original in a different environment, triggering new developments that cannot be simply attributed to the force of the original is what seems to be viewed nowadays as Luther’s most important contribution to translation scholarship. Further evidence can be found, for example, in the terms in which Luther’s relevance as a translation theorist is presented in the Wikipedia entry devoted to him, according to which his translations of the Bible caused‘a tremendous impact on the church and on German culture … fostered the devel- opment of a standard version of the German language, added several principles to the art of translation, and influenced the translation into English of the King James Bible’.

As this brief incursion into a few comments on the‘Letter’ shows, what is considered to be relevant about Martin Luther’s work for the study of translation cannot be dissociated from the context and the circumstances that have made it possible for his ‘Letter’ to be read and accepted as a piece of scholarly theory, and then disseminated through the chan- nels that constitute the network of power and influence that supports and is also sup- ported by the discipline and the institutions where it thrives and gets validated. Therefore, the selection of texts considered as pertinent theoretical statements in each of the antholo- gies mentioned above will reflect not only their editors’ goals and interests, but also their vision regarding translation scholarship, the direction it should take and, ultimately, what they find to be relevant about theory in general and the role it should play in relation to practice. At the same time, to the extent that such selections are widely disseminated, what they deem to be relevant will play a fundamental role in shaping the field and in estab- lishing the canon. As Venuti points out in the introduction to the second edition of The Translation Studies Reader,‘edited volumes always work to define a field, a body of knowl- edge, a textbook market, and so they create as much as satisfy institutional needs, especially in the case of emergent disciplines’ (2004: 1).

As the discipline grows and as the community of scholars invested in its development becomes stronger and more articulate, the relationship between the creation and the satisfaction of these‘institutional needs’ tends to become more symmetrical and the edi- tors of such volumes may not be the only ones involved in the decision process regarding the choices of relevant theoretical statements in the area. As Venuti clarifies in the intro- duction mentioned above, the‘image of the field fashioned’ by his anthology ‘reflects the contemporary scene all the more closely because it has been produced in consultation with many leading writers and translators, theorists and scholars’ (2004: 3). The general scope of the anthology, though, is still its editor’s sole responsibility also because he is the one who selects those with whom he will consult and what recommendations he will accept. Again, as Venuti candidly reveals in the introduction just mentioned, although the Reader was originally designed as a project that he would share with Mona Baker, the well-known scholar whose interests within the discipline are quite different from his, their ‘significant’ differences led him to decide to work alone on its second edition. Venuti’s comments are, thus, further evidence that the texts and trends that will be considered relevant within the discipline will change as the discipline changes and develops different branches and sub-areas. As he

seems to have learned from his collaboration with Baker, their different views ‘reflected the institutional divisions of academic labor’, showing that ‘many interdisciplines are possible in translation studies, and that even if disciplines do not share conceptual paradigms and research methods, they might nonetheless be joined together to advance a project on translation’ (2004: 4).

The promises of theory as utopia

One of the supporting pillars of the essentialist thinking that has defined Western culture