Ethical Aspects of Translation: Striking a Balance between Following Translation Ethics and Producing a TT for Serving a Specific Purpose (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Ethics
2020
The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Ethics offers a comprehensive overview of issues surrounding ethics in translating and interpreting. The chapters chart the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of ethical thinking in Translation Studies and analyze the ethical dilemmas of various translatorial actors, including translation trainers and researchers. Authored by leading scholars and new voices in the field, the 31 chapters present a wide coverage of emerging issues such as increasing technologization of translation, posthumanism, volunteering and activism, accessibility and linguistic human rights. Many chapters provide the first extensive overview of the topic or present new takes on established areas. The book is divided into four parts, with the first covering the most influential ethical theories. Part II takes the perspective of agents in different contexts and the ethical dilemmas they face, while Part III takes a critical look at central institutions structuring and controlling ethical behaviour. Finally, Part IV focuses on special issues and new challenges, and signals new directions for further study. This handbook is an indispensable resource for all students and researchers of translation and ethics within translation and interpreting studies, multilingualism and comparative literature.
Translation and ethics: translation choices motivated by ideologies underlying the source text
Since 2013, participants of project ExTrad — a Community Outreach Program carried out at the Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB) — have been translating texts in the state of Paraíba (Northeast Brazil). Aimed both at providing translations for the community and at helping the professional development of the students of the Translation Program of the University, the project has debated a number of ethical issues since its establishment. This paper discusses some of the ethical issues we have dealt with when translating an 18th century text — on rhetoric, artistic perception and good taste — into contemporary Brazilian Portuguese. Although its theme is apparently non-controversial, colonialist and sexist ideologies underlie the discussions presented on the source text, arising discussions on how to tackle the issue and on how to translate it. This paper does not aim at closing the discussion, nor at presenting definitive solutions, but at fostering a debate, by presenting translation problems as cases that dwell in a grey area and that require complex decisions.
Electronic Journal of Vocational Colleges December/Aralık 2012 CONSIDERING ETHICS IN TRANSLATION
Ethics is one of the most significant matters which translation studies has been interested in recently. In this study, with reference to the early views to translation, and then to more recent approaches to it, translation and its development through time has been described. It has been shown that, there may be times when the translator may deviate from the faithful rendering of a source text. Moreover, it has been questioned if the translator has right to do any changes in the source text, whether it is always ethical to adapt or change the original text or not. In the end, it has been tried to prove that, there are times when it is not ethical to do changes or adaptations in translation of texts. Introduction It has already been accepted by many translators and scholars that, considering the aim of translation and many other factors, the translator may prefer not to translate word for word, keeping in mind the cultural differences between the source text and target recipients, may adapt the text into the target culture recipients in order to make it comprehensible for them. For this reason, the translator may choose not to be one hundred percent loyal to the source text, linguistically. Moreover, it has been the major concern of the contemporary translators that they have been regarded as having secondary importance compared to the source text writers. Therefore, with the thought of lack of appreciation and professional recognition, some translators allege that they have the right to be visible, rather than stay invisible, and they reflect their own point of view, comment or ideology in their translations. Although one finds the issues above rational, we cannot stop ourselves asking some questions like: Does it mean that, while translating, the translator can make " any " changes in the source text? Should there be a limit in the visibility of the translator, or amount of information added and omitted by the translator in the process of translation? Can the translator reflect his own point of view, although it doesn't exist in the source text, or does he have the right to mislead the reader? Should the translator have the opportunity to form the text thoroughly? I think that the answers to questions like these are directly related to the term " ethics " in translation, for this reason, it will be the main focus of my current study. The aim of this study is then, firstly to go over the recent approaches to translation, then, with reference to these models, evaluate translation in terms of ethics and discuss the questions mentioned above, and finally, make clear when we can surely say that the translator breaks the ethical rules of translation. Before starting my discussion about ethics in translation studies, the reason for me to touch on some previous and recent approaches and concepts is that, I assume they will facilitate our understanding of translation since they enlighten translation and herewith ethical understanding in translation.
Translation Ethics: From Invisibility to Difference
2017
Since its inception as an academic discipline, Translation Studies has contributed in the past few decades to raise the status of translation as a field of critical thought in general, and of translators as cultural agents in particular. However, translation and translators have been around for millennia, and to speak of them is to speak of the very roots of language and civilization. It is also to speak about ethics. In this article, I propose to briefly review the history of translation ethics, by beginning to make an etymological and conceptual distinction between ethics and morality, and then focusing on the notion of fidelity as the traditional moral guideline for translators. Afterwards, I will try to demonstrate the paradigm shift that has, more recently, been taking place in translation discourses. Casting away the age-old veil of neutrality and invisibility which has covered translation practice in the past, many thinkers have come to reimagine and reposition what it means ...
Textual, moral and psychological voices of translation
Slovo.ru: Baltic accent, 2019
The concept of voice has engendered a growing amount of research in translation studies in the last decades, especially regarding literary translation. Voice is typically used in studies that investigate stylistic or structural characteristics of translated texts, intertextuality and other forms of multivocality and ethical questions related to agency, ideology and power in translation and interpreting. The first part of this article defines two essential concepts related to voice in translation — voice and text — and describes the state of the art of research in this field. The second part aims to deepen the discussion on voice in translation studies by introducing the notion of the voice of conscience from philosophy and political science and the notion of inner voices from psychology.
Translatability and Cultural Difference~ Toward an Ethics of Real" Translation·
2005
In recent years "translation," in the broader sense of understanding (and accepting) alterity through some form of representational transfer, has become a key term in critical discourse, one often used to define a certain cosmopolitan respect for cultural difference and cross-cultural understanding. This paper begins by questioning this trend, arguing that in this cosmopolitan stance there is an implicit, globalizing valuation that has to be analyzed and critiqued through a return to the ethical dimension of translation. To establish the relevance of ethics, this paper refers to Jacques Derrida's account of "relevant" translation, taking it perhaps beyond Derrida's purpose, to advocate an ethical translation in terms of which translational judgment is both relativized and constrained by a sense of direction and terminality. Walter Benjamin's insistence on the "linguistic being" of all objects and Homi Bhabha's spatializing conceptualization of multilingual competence are discussed. An ethics of the real is then proposed which, following Lacan's reading of Freud's "Project for a Scientific Psychology" in his seventh Seminar, should remind us that to signify is not only a right but a drive, a call to return to what is silenced in the traumatic emergence of subjectivity from matter.