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The Cultural Turn of the 1980s

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The Cultural Turn of the 1980s Week 6 Mary Snell-Horby, The Cultural Turn of the 1980s , in The Turns of Translation Studies, John Benjamins, 2006 Descriptive ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: The Cultural Turn of the 1980s


1
The Cultural Turn of the 1980s
  • Week 6

2
  • Mary Snell-Horby, The Cultural Turn of the
    1980s, in The Turns of Translation Studies, John
    Benjamins, 2006

3
  • Descriptive Translation Studies
  • - Itamar Even-Zohar and the polysystem.
  • Literature is seen in a kinetic situation.
  • Theo Hermans and The Manipulation of Literature
    (1985)
  • From the point of view of the target literature,
    all translation implies a certain degree of
    manipulation of the source text for a certain
    purpose.
  • The Manipulation School

4
  • What they have in common is, briefly, a view of
    literature as a complex and dynamic system a
    conviction that there should be a continual
    interplay between theoretical models and
    practical case studies an approach to literary
    translation which is descriptive,
    target-oriented, functional and systemic and an
    interest in the norms and constraints that govern
    the production and reception of translations, in
    the relation between translation and other types
    of text processing, and in the place and role of
    translations both within a given literature and
    in the interaction between literatures. (Hermans
    1985)

5
  • Descriptive, target-oriented, functional and
    systemic ? prescriptive, source-text oriented,
    linguistic and atomistic.
  • The central issue the function of the
    translation in the target culture ? linguistic
    features of the ST.

6
  • Semiotically speaking, it will be clear that it
    is the target or recipient culture, or a certain
    section of it, which serves as the initiator of
    the decisions to translate and of the translating
    process. Translating is to a large extent
    conditioned by the goals it is designed to serve,
    and these goals are set in, and by, the
    prospective receptor system(s). Consequently,
    translators operate first and foremost in the
    interest of the culture into which they are
    translating, and not in the interest of the
    source text, let alone the source culture.
    (Toury 1985)

7
  • Culture the entire social context involved in
    the translation, along with the norms,
    conventions, ideology and values of that society
    or receptor system. (Toury 1985)
  • André Lefevere and Susan Bassnett
  • cultural turn
  • Translation, History and Culture (1990)
  • The abandoning of the scientistic linguistic
    approach, equivalence.
  • From text to culture

8
  • The Skopos Theory and its Functional Approach
  • Veermer, A Framework for a General Theory of
    Translation (1978)
  • the aim and purpose of a translation is
    determined by the needs and expectations of the
    reader in his culture. Vermeer called this the
    skopos, and the so-called faithfulness to the
    original, equivalence in fact, was subordinated
    to this skopos. (Kussmaul, 2004)

9
  • A text is embedded in a given situation
    (sociocultural background)
  • The translation is dependent on its function as a
    text implanted in the target culture
  • Reiss Vermeer, Foundations of a General Theory
    of Translation, 1984.
  • Language is part of a culture.
  • Translator bilingual and bicultural
  • The text is not a static and isolated linguistic
    fragment, it part of a culture (a cultural
    product), it is dependent on its reception.

10
  • This approach relativizes both text and
    translation no perfect translation (translation
    depends on its skopos, its situation).
  • Translation
  • an offer of information in a language t of the
    culture T, which imitates an offer of information
    in a language s of the culture S according to its
    specified function. In other words, a translation
    is not the transcoding of words or sentences from
    one language into another, but a complex form of
    action in which someone gives information about a
    text (source language material) under new
    functional, cultural and linguistic conditions
    and in a new situation (Vermeer, 1986)

11
  • No equivalence
  • Skopos (Greek for aim, purpose, goal), the
    purpose of the translation in the target culture.
  • Vermeer de-throning the source text. It is a
    means to a new text.
  • Translation is cultural tranfer and not merely a
    linguistic one.

12
  • Culture
  • the totality of norms, conventions and
    opinions which determine the behaviour of the
    members of a society, and all results of this
    behaviour (such as architecture, university
    institutions, etc., etc. (Vermeer 1989)

13
  • Deconstruction, or the Cannibalistic Approach
  • Rosemary Arrojo, Translation Workshop, 1986
  • Brazils colonial history
  • Translation to free the country
  • Political resistance (indigenous roots)
  • 1920s Anthropophagy Movement
  • To devour the foreign cultural values

14
  • Augusto and Haroldo de Campos
  • Creative text production
  • Third World translation model
  • cannibalistic model the Other is absorbed,
    reproduced, enriched with indigenous elements.
  • Cannibalism 1) a political resistance 2) a
    reaction against cultural domination 3) a
    translation philosophy.
  • Tension authority of the original and the
    autonomy of the translation.
  • A challenge to the hierarchy of power between
    original and translation..

15
  • Western philosophical tradition fixation on the
    written word (Translation should give a complete
    transcript of the ideas of the original work,
    Tytler, 1978)
  • Derridda no fixed or final sense, every new
    reading results in a translation.
  • Translator author
  • Translation interpretation (the author and the
    translator)
  • New meanings are produced

16
  • Instead of considering the text or sign as a
    container which can be filled with content and
    hence controlled, I propose using a new metaphor,
    that of the palimpsest. The dictionary defines
    palimpsest as a manuscript on which two
    or more successive texts have been written, each
    one being erased to make room for the next.
    (Arrojo, 1971)
  • Metaphorically, in our workshop the
    palimpsest can be seen as a text which in every
    cultural community and in every epoch can be
    erased to male place for another rewrite (or
    interpretation, reading or translation) of the
    same text. (Arrojo)

17
  • Translation does not preserve the original but
    produces meanings.
  • Equivalence is invalid
  • Translator an active role (visible)
  • There is no original, no irrefutable intended
    meaning the death of the author (Barthes, 1977)
    and the birth of the reader (Arrojo 1997)
  • The aim is not to destroy the author (his/her
    work), but to create the potential of a further
    existence.
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