Translation - A Concept and Model for the Study of Culture (original) (raw)
Related papers
The International Journal of the Humanities: Annual Review, 2010
The history of translation is as long as that of literature itself, yet only recently has translation been conceptualised not just as a channel of exchange between languages but also as a journey across cultural and social borders. This ‘cultural’ translation interprets one side to another, carrying it ‘across’ from its original context and reshaping thoughts across cultures in line with certain norms. This complex intercultural encounter – operationalised through the translation and re-writing of foreign literatures – brings with it a profound challenge for the humanities. As scholars writing within the interpretive disciplines this encounter with ‘otherness’ manifests itself in the subjects we choose as the objects of our research, the interpretive lenses through which we locate our knowledge and the institutional, societal and personal influences that inform our findings. In a globalised world the practice of cultural translation, as our way of making sense of the difference we perceive, is an encounter taking place not just in worlds ‘out there’, but on our very doorsteps. As ‘objects in the midst of other objects’, our desire is to make sense of ourselves in relation to others and to account for the others we see all around us, in the materials we research and the practice we commit to writing. In short, our desire to work our way through the anxieties of otherness. This article will explore cultural translation as an ethical regime for intercultural encounter that re-examines extant power relations and resists essentialism; a regime in which cultural border is viewed not as a barrier but only the beginning of the intercultural relationship.
Translation As Translating As Culture
Sign Systems Studies, 2002
Abstract. The most common difficulty in translation studies has traditionally been the dilemma between the historical and synchronic approaches in the analysis and description of the culture of translation. On the one hand the culture of translation might be presented as the sum of ...
Translating Cultural Studies, 2024
This paper engages with the transculturalization of Cultural Studies by focusing on the theoretical and political implications of translating it. This is a question that has been discussed over the years, especially in the context of the global spread and the institutionalization (or lack thereof) of cultural studies in universities outside of Britain in the early 1990s. In this context cultural studies practitioners have questioned the very use of labels such as 'internationalization' or 'globalization', and expressed concerns about whether its expansion would happen at the expense of its distinctiveness. I pick up this discussion while re-framing it from a perspective which focuses on the politics of translation. I argue that translation is not a linear or automatic process (you bring something from A to B and it gets translated), but a collective work which is translingual, trans-and extradisciplinary. From this perspective, cultural studies has always been characterized by a strong commitment to translation. If labels such as 'British' or 'American' cultural studies obscure this commitment, this is because of a narrow understanding of translation as a cultural practice. In light of these considerations, I point to translation as a fundamental means to oppose cultural elitism, and the fragmentation of intellectual engagement produced by disciplinary, (inter)nationalizing and globalizing trends. Against this background, the paper stresses the potential of translation work with respect to rethinking cultural studies' distinctiveness in the current conjuncture.
Translation as a Confront of Languages and Cultures
Alba Teneqexhi, 2013
Translation remains the most complicated and unknown phenomenon. The process of translation is the subject of research of recent times, among other things, established the systematic analysis of the translation formulations created by interpreters and linguists in different eras and places. Necessarily translation is closely connected with the multiplicity of the ways of thinking and as a consequence I have treated this occurrence as a confront of cultures, in a confrontation that must reach a balance and a measurability of losses or supplements during the hard work of the translator: of this being that 'sits in the shade and makes light'. Herein, different treatments and considerations on the problems of translation and cultural connotations that confront and interject best in the binomial culturetranslation. In this research are presented different approaches and considerations on the problem of translation and cultural connotations, which are faced and interlinked best in culture binomial -translation. As a result of this research turns out that contacts between two languages define linguistic modifications to the systems that much so that translation can be best seen as a rewriting, as a manipulation that expresses the power of a culture over another.
Cultural translation: An introduction to the problem, and Responses
Translation arouses an action of transferring from one place or position to another, or of changing from one state of things to another. This does not apply only to the words of different languages, but also to human beings and their most important properties too can be moved across all sorts of differences and borders and so translated from one place to another, for instance from one cultural and political condition to another. Thus, one can culturally translate people for a political purpose and with existential consequences. No discussion of the concept of cultural translation can easily dispense with an analysis of the very concrete devices of such translation if it strives to maintain contact with the political and existential issues at stake in the debate on cultural translation. The political meaning of cultural translation is not a quality external to the concept and capable of being discussed in a haphazard way. Precisely by becoming cultural, translation opens up the problem of its intrinsic political meaning.
Reflections on Translation in Literary, Everyday, and Anthropological Practice
(This is the talk at the seminar of linguistic anthropology devoted to the questions of translation) Whenever we think about translation, it is about (mis)translation inasmuch. Vladimir Nabokov famously required another Vladimir Nabokov to translate his own work (the list of qualities of his ideal translator that he named narcissistically centered Nabokov himself, who, at least in his own assessment, of course, possessed all these qualities). Some writers refused to translate themselves. Others, translating, transformed their own work to the degree it became an independent new work. The funny stories of mistranslations abound. In a sense, the situation when a speaker ventures into the unfamiliar territory of the new language brings risks. These risks are not unlike the risks that anthropologist experiences stepping onto the land where she did not live before—or even if she lived, in her new capacity of the researcher that defamiliarizes the familiar to her. The speaker of a language not mastered fully is in a similar situation. They are definitely outside of their comfort zone and up to surprises. In my own practice, I used translation for the literary impossible purposes of recreating “the violet in the crucible,” by Percy Shelley’s expression, in my daily experience of living abroad from the country of my native language—Russia—for more than seven years, and in my anthropological practice. All these versions of translating things from one language into the other, from one culture into the other, were closely intertwined. I will begin with literary translation, talk about everyday translation, and finish with the translation in anthropological practice. The different ways to translate things lead to the Babylon point of bifurcation of the languages that might be not a curse but a blessing. All these instantiations are called into existence in order to be considered in the light of the main idea of this writing: there are no different languages; “language” is a social construct. Before you frown at the triteness of the expression “social construct” or say “so, is everything social construct nowadays?”, allow me to elucidate my thesis. When I first heard myself to profess this conviction, which happened at a lecture of Expressive Culture at UT, Spring 2019, I was probably more surprised to hear it than anyone else in the audience. Yet,