Conceptual tools in translation history

Abstract

Translation history, which is here taken as including interpreting and audiovisual mediation, needs conceptual tools firstly in order to distinguish itself from other kinds of history, with which it then can and should interact. And if there is a specific circumstance in which those tools need to be special in some way, it is presumably related in part to the nature of the data, both quantitative and qualitative, entering translation history: typically there is an abundance of diverse linguistic information deriving from the comparison of texts, an exceptional degree of unreliability in paratextual pronouncements on those texts, and frequent, albeit not ubiquitous, marginality in the identity and milieux of translators, often requiring the indirect inferences of detective work as one goes further back in time.The following survey of conceptual tools starts from the text-based concepts that seem to be most central to the Western translation studies, then moving to those that are process-based and more susceptible to historicize a wider range of translation forms. Attention will be paid to the inherent essentialism of most of the conceptual tools developed within Western translation studies and to the ways those concepts can run aground when confronted with a wider range of translational data. Some proposals will be made as to how a few basic categorical splits may be redressed in order to embrace a plurality of translation forms, hopefully without dissipating into positions where translation is always already everywhere.

Mapping Salience and Trajectory: On How to Situate Literary Translators in Publishing Legends of the Condor Heroes With Visualization

“…The approach to define actors, describe their interactions and collect data in this study is based on ANT-inspired ethnography, highlighting the general symmetric contribution between human and non-human actors. It echoes what Pym (1998, p. 92) contends: “[I]f we are to elucidate the specific role of translation within a network, we must first open up our range of inquiry to include non-translational modes of transfer.” This paper, with visual presentation and quantitative analysis, complements the mainstream study on translator’s positioning. It still, albeit having taken Pym’s notion into consideration, inevitably suffers from nonspecificity and partiality.…”

Translating knowledge in the multilingual paradigm: Beyond epistemicide

“…Cordingley and Montini, 2015; Nunes et al, 2020) might offer a methodological framework for this kind of study that could help (through the study of authors’ plans, drafts, notes, and correspondence) to establish if code-switching and linguistic hybridity are present in the pretextual phase as the disciplinary discourse is negotiated and terminological equivalences are sought, and in what language(s) the authors are thinking during the project-design, literature review, data-collection, and planning stages. Potentially fruitful notions here might be those of the intertext , defined by Jung (2002) as ‘a collective knowledge distilled from a multiplicity of texts read by the authors or even language usage that they have absorbed’ (p. 19) and which forms part of the ‘pre-stage of the original’ (p. 30), 15 and Anthony Pym’s (1998: 177–192) interculture , the transitional zone of cultural and linguistic overlaps and intersections in which real-life translators live and work. Modern academia, I have suggested (Bennett, 2020) might be an example of such an interculture which could be studied from a translational perspective.…”

Transimperial Eyes: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of Colonial Narratives about the Dutch Expedition to Southern Chile (1643)

“…These approaches focus on aspects such as historical accuracy, cultural understanding and representation, and linguistic adaptation. Some of the most relevant currents regarding translation methodologies of colonial texts include historical translation, which aims to capture the historical and cultural authenticity of the original text by preserving linguistic and cultural features of the colonial period in the translation, even if it means retaining archaisms or obsolete grammatical structures [48][49][50]. There is also a body of work focused on culturally sensitive translation, which aims to convey cultural meaning and connotations in the target language, maintaining cultural fidelity and adapting cultural elements to be understandable and appropriate for a contemporary audience [21,51].…”