The Cultural Turn of the 1980s

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The Cultural Turn of the 1980s

• Week 6

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

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• 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

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• 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)

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• 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.

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• 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)

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• 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

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• 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)

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• 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.

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• 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)

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• 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.

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• 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)

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• 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

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• 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..

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• 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

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• 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)

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• 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.