Words and Worlds: Ethnography and Translation Theory (original) (raw)
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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,
New Perspectives on Translation: Translating Odisha by Paul St-Pierre
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2021
Translating Odisha (2019) by Prof. Paul St-Pierre fetches a wide range of new perspectives on translation and the act of translating with specific reference to translations from and to Odia. Being a Professor of Linguistics and Translation Studies, and at the same time a prolific translator, St-Pierre produces a rare combination of theory and application. He invokes and applies translation theories even as he theorises the experience of translating. Through three decades of association with Odia literature and its historiography and through translations with collaborators, St-Pierre has become an authority on translation studies in Odisha. His recent book is mostly a compilation of the articles that he has published in different journals of international repute, papers that he has presented in conferences and seminars, and a few short occasional pieces.
Dungar College ÖZET Çeviri; bir kültürün, bir bölgenin edebiyat›n› di¤er bir kültüre-bölgeye tafl›r ve karfl›l›kl› kültürel iliflkiyle birlikte güven duygusu oluflmas›na katk›da bulunur. Fakat Hindistan örne¤inde bölgesel kültürün ürünü olan edebiyat›n daha güçlü olan milli kültürün içinde erime tehlikesi vard›r. Dolay›s›yla, çevirmenin stratejisi hem alt kültür ürününü muhafaza etmek, hem de milli kültürle bar›fl›k olmal›d›r. Yani çeviri metin Hintlilerde bu eserin kendilerine ait oldu¤unu hissettirirken, ayn› zamanda da bir bölge kültürüne ait oldu¤unu göstermelidir. ‹ngilizce'nin farkl› kullan›mlar› oldu¤u gibi, teori ve pratikte bir Rajastan metni de bir Pencap metninden daha farkl› okunmal›d›r. Hindistan gibi çok dilli bir ülkede alt kültüre ait ve daha az bilinen Marwari (Rajastanca olarak bilinen dil) dili ve dillerin ürünü olan edebiyat ürünleri ve çevirileri öncelik kazanmaktad›r. Bu makalenin amac›; Hindistan özelinde üretilmifl, kültürel anlamda benzerlik tafl›yan alt kültüre ait metinleri dikkate alarak, dilller aras› çeviri metinler üzerinden yerel-bölgesel kültürün önemini vurgulamakt›r. Makalenin ilk bölümü çeviri teorisi ve uygula-malar› üzerinedir. ‹kinci bölüm ise, Vijaydan Detha'n›n k›sa hikaye antolojisi olan Chouboli adl› eserini çeviren Christi Merrill'in bir çevirmen olarak durumunu de¤erlendirecektir. Sonuçta, Christi'nin eserinin önsözünde kendi tecrübesinden yola ç›karak ifade etti¤i "etkili bir uygulama olarak çeviri" bafll›-¤›n›n bir tart›flmas› yap›lacakt›r. ANAHTAR KEL‹MELER yerel edebiyat, çokdillilik, çeviri çal›flmalar›, dil içi çeviri çal›flmalar›, yeni yaz›n, dil ve kültür topluluklar ABSTRACT Translation makes the literature of a culture and region known to other regions and establishes a certain credibility and relationship of mutual regard. But in the context of India there is the danger of so called regional literature subsumed into more powerful national culture. Thus the translator's strategy would be to bring out the sense of continuities within the nation as well as the distinct sense of location of the text that has been translated. The readers will have to be convinced of both the fellow Indianness of the translated text as well as of the uniqueness of its location. A Rajasthani text has to be read differently from a Punjabi text and calls for different kind of theory and practice, also different kinds of Englishes. Thus in a multilingual country like India, the translation of indigenous literature and culture should be treated as a matter of primary national importance in that it would contribute to spreading the knowledge about lesser known social and linguistic groups such as Marwari (popularly known as Rajasthani). The present paper is an attempt to look at the nature of interlingual translation practices within India and locate the significance of parallel texts which address different linguistic and cultural communities at large and provide an opportunity to celebrate culture specificity. The first part of the paper addresses the issue of translation as theory and translation as praxis. The second part focuses on Christi Merrill's position as the translator of Vijaydan Detha's short story collection Chouboli. It discusses at length Christi's own experiences as expressed in the foreword which she titles, 'translating as a telling praxis'.
Much more than a metaphor: translation in anthropology
Lingua Franca. The History of the Book in Translation 7, pp. 1 – 19, 2021
During the 1990s, theories of globalization spread as rapidly as neoliberalism. Their effects are widely recognized and continue to have a major influence on broad sectors of the social sciences and the humanities. These include attacks on scientific thought in the rationalist-universalist tradition and the proclamation of a New Era, recognizable in discourse distinguished by the use of the prefixes “pluri-,” “trans-” and “post-,” the use of neologisms, generally to demonstrate the increasing uniformity of human experiences, and a fascination with the metaphorical. The “actualist fascination” with translation is evidenced by an exaggeration of the virtues of the term itself as a metaphor, as a means of replacing symbols: the expression, in one language, of words written or spoken in another in the strict use or the replacement of one complex sign with another that is more effective for the purposes of comprehension in the broad sense. It was not until the start of this century that new areas of investigation were established to understand “the global cultural reality” from other perspectives. Like studies of the book and of publishing, studies of translation began to grow slowly in the mid-1980s but multiplied rapidly from 2000 onward. Today, it is beyond doubt that these areas constitute two of the most stimulating domains for the theoretical renewal of the social sciences and the humanities. Because they are rooted primarily in disciplines such as history and sociology, studies of the book and publishing have not been so greatly affected by the vogues of contemporary theory. This is not the case with translation studies, which has strong links to studies of literature, semiology and the communication sciences. To avoid simplifications and to observe both the theoretical detours and the heuristic potential of studies of translation, I will focus my analysis on the term’s place in anthropological theory. In this discipline, appeals to translation also accompanied the destabilization of the paradigms of modernity and debates about globalization, making it a key concept in understanding the relationship between global processes and local experiences. Anthropology in the English-speaking world has played the leading role in legitimating this approach. It has accompanied the development of comprehensive perspectives, gaining visibility with the development of interpretivism, and being elevated to the condition of an epistemological device that has been consolidated in the intellectual sphere characteristic of studies of a post-modern or post-colonial nature. Since the 1990s, discourses around “cultural translation” have expanded and it seems reasonable to argue that this has become a trend. When undertaking ethnographic, sociological, and historical investigations of translations of literature and social sciences between different languages and national cultures, I encountered the fact that while translation might be good for thinking about global–local realities and one’s own discipline, it is above all a concrete practice. It encompasses distinct linguistic procedures, establishes delimited practices, involves competencies that are not universally distributed, structures particular social and symbolic relations, traces its own history, and entails political and economic dimensions. I argue, then, that translation is a phenomenon sui generis which deserves to be treated as a social act worthy of empirical study. If theory only becomes possible and necessary in the dialectic between the general and the particular, this essay seeks to define the relationship between anthropology and translation in order to overcome the limitations of metaphor and propose a field of research which, paradoxically, has barely been explored by anthropologists and which we might call the ethnography of translation.
New Perspectives on Translation: Translating Odisha by Paul
Translating Odisha (2019) by Prof. Paul St-Pierre fetches a wide range of new perspectives on translation and the act of translating with specific reference to translations from and to Odia. Being a Professor of Linguistics and Translation Studies, and at the same time a prolific translator, St-Pierre produces a rare combination of theory and application. He invokes and applies translation theories even as he theorises the experience of translating. Through three decades of association with Odia literature and its historiography and through translations with collaborators, St-Pierre has become an authority on translation studies in Odisha. His recent book is mostly a compilation of the articles that he has published in different journals of international repute, papers that he has presented in conferences and seminars, and a few short occasional pieces.
The Concept of Translation in Western and Indian Traditions
Journal of Education and Culture Studies
An effort is being made in this paper to suggest a methodology underlying the idea of translation that incorporates its definition, its concept, its types and its aspects keeping both the Indian and western points of view in mind.
Translating worlds: The epistemological space of translation
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2014
Translation has played an important but equivocal role in the history of anthropology and linguistics. At least since Saussure and Boas, languages have been seen as systems whose differences make precise translation exceedingly difficult, if not impossible. More recently, Quine has argued that, in purely abstract terms, reference is ultimately inscrutable and translation between languages is in principle indeterminate. From a Kuhn-inspired point of view, we argue, on the contrary, that the challenge posed by the constant confrontation of "incommensurable" (yet translated) paradigms may become a field for ethnographical inquiry. This approach can provide a new anthropological way to define translation, not only as a key technique for understanding ethnography, but also as a general epistemological principle. Social anthropology would be thus defined not only as the study of cultural differences, but also and simultaneously as a science of translation: the study of the empirical processes and theoretical principles of cultural translation.
Translation, Language, Anthropology
Interventions : International Journal of postcolonial studies
When we categorize people who elude categories, is that an act of establishing equivalences? And do our categories reflect an indoctrination of the state's enumerated and strait jacket categories? This paper asks of the author and rest of us important questions on ethnography and translation; and focusses upon a very tiny and marginalized community in a border region.