Cultural Turn - LM94 - 2022-23
Cultural Turn - LM94 - 2022-23
Cultural Turn - LM94 - 2022-23
Toury (1978/1995) - ‘Adequate’ - subscribe to the norms of the source text vs.
‘Acceptable’ translation - norms systems of the target culture are triggered
Lefevere
LM94 - Theory module - l.santini
André Lefevere takes up the seminal work of Even-Zohar and Toury and
redefines their concepts of literary system and norm. Lefevere treats translation,
criticism, editing, and historiography as forms of “refraction” or “rewriting.”
Refractions, he writes in the 1982 essay reprinted here, “carry a work of
literature over from one system into another,” and they are determined by such
factors as “patronage,” “poetics,” and “ideology.” This interpretive framework
gives a new legitimacy to the study of literary translations by illuminating their
creation of canons and traditions in the target culture. Lefevere sees that
Romantic notions of authorial originality have marginalized translation studies,
especially in the English-speaking world. (Venuti 2000: 217)
The cultural turn
LM94 - Theory module - l.santini
The cultural turn => a massive intellectual phenomenon, happening across the
humanities
● Linguistics => the rise of discourse analysis
the growth of interest in corpus linguistics,
● Literary studies => cultural questions took over from formalist approaches to
textual study, from post-structuralism onwards, through the last decades of the
20th century, i.e., feminism, gender criticism, deconstruction, post-colonialism,
hybridity theory
● Literary studies adopted methods from cultural studies
● History => more emphasis on cultural and social history, expansion of once
marginal areas, e.g., the history of medicine, of the family, of science etc.
● Cultural geography
● Classics => the relationship between ancient cultures and contemporary ones.
LM94 - Theory module - l.santini
Hardwick’s claims:
● translation as an instrument of change.
● the translator of ancient texts is to produce a text and seek to articulate in
some way the cultural framework within which that text is embedded
● translation enables contemporary readers to construct lost civilisations
● translation is the portal through which the past can be accessed
LM94 - Theory module - l.santini
The feminist engagement with translation has been concentrated on four areas (Flotow 1997; Simon
1996).
● Uncovering female translators and their role in history. Women, by and large, were not meant to
participate in public discourse but sometimes they could translate, as a form of secondary speaking.
Some women even felt more comfortable translating than writing in their own name (Stark 1999).
● Tracing the historical and ideological construction of translation and its correlation with traditional
gender constructions, i.e., the association of translation with submission, reproduction, loyalty and
femininity, always in opposition to the creative primacy of original speech and writing (Chamberlain
1988/1992; Johnson 1985).
● translating gendered language and a) the translator’s responsibility when confronted with gender
bias in texts (Levine 1991); b) subsequently attention shifted from ethical to technical questions, as
translators struggled to cope with the explosion of experimental writing by feminist authors seeking
to forge a language of their own.
● Practicing feminist translation and criticism. For Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood (1991), translation
can only be a demonstrative rewriting in the feminine, a political act that makes language speak for
women.
LM94 - Theory module - l.santini
In the 1988 essay reprinted here, Lori Chamberlain focuses on the gender metaphors that
have recurred in leading translation theorists since the seventeenth century, demonstrating
the enormous extent to which a patriarchal model of authority has underwritten the
subordinate status of translation. Chamberlain suggests how a feminist concern with
gender identities might be productive for translation studies, particularly in historical
research that recovers forgotten translating women, but also in translation projects that are
sensitive to ideologically coded foreign writing, whether feminist or masculinist. The
experimental strategies devised by translators like Suzanne Jill Levine (1991) and Barbara
Godard (1986) aim to challenge “the process by which translation complies with gender
constructs. (Venuti 2000: 219)
LM94 - Theory module - l.santini
What do these metaphorical models reveal about how we conceptualize translation? Metaphorical language
has been central to translation studies at all periods of time and in various cultures. Metaphors have played a
key role in shaping the way in which we understand translation, determining what facets of the translation
process are deemed to be important [...] and aiding in the training of successive generations of translators and
theorists. (André 2010)
References
André, James St, (ed.) Thinking through translation with metaphors. London & NY: Routledge, 2010.
Bassnett, Susan and André Lefevere (eds). (1990). Translation, History and Culture, London & NY: Pinter.
Bassnett, S. (2007). ‘Culture and Translation’, in Kuhiwczak P. & K. Littau (eds), A companion to translation studies, Clevedon
(UK): Multilingual Matters.
Even-Zohar, Itamar (2012) ‘The position of translated literature within the literary polysystem’, in Lawrence Venuti (ed.) (2012) The
Translation Studies Reader, 3rd edition, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 162–7.
Even-Zohar, Itamar (2005) ‘Polysystem theory revised’, in Itamar Even-Zohar Papers in Culture Research, Tel Aviv: The Porter Chair
of Semiotics, Tel Aviv University, pp. 38–49.
Toury, Gideon (1995/2012) Descriptive Translation Studies – and Beyond, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Flotow, Luise von (1997). Translation and Gender: Translating in the ‘era of feminism’, Manchester and Ottawa: St. Jerome and
University of Ottawa Press.
Lefevere, A. (1992). Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame, London & NY: Routledge.
Munday, Jeremy. (2009). The Routledge Companion to Translation Studies, London & NY: Routledge.
Munday, J. (2016). Introducing Translation Studies. Theories and Applications. London & NY: Routledge.
Simon, Sherry (1996). Gender in Translation: Cultural identity and the politics of transmission, London & NY: Routledge.
Venuti, Lawrence. (ed.). (2000). The Translation Studies Reader. London & NY: Routledge.