translation
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+ | # Translation | ||
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+ | Ryan Schram | ||
+ | September 12, 2018 | ||
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+ | This is a longer draft version of an article that has been accepted for publication in the // | ||
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+ | ## Abstract | ||
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+ | Unlike many philosophers of language and scholars of translation, | ||
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+ | *** | ||
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+ | Imagine yourself suddenly set down in a community where everyone speaks only one language and this language is absolutely distinct from your own, and from all others. Imagine also that you wish to not merely to learn this exotic language, but be able to interpret statements in that language accurately in your own language for your own fellow speakers. You would need to translate these statements from the indigenous language into your own. Would this be possible given that you have absolutely no common frame of reference except the experiences you share with speakers of the indigenous language? When, for instance, a rabbit appears before you and an indigenous speaker, and this speaker utters “gavagai, | ||
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+ | W. V. O. Quine, a philosopher of language, describes such a hypothetical situation as an example of “radical translation” (Quine 1960, 28–30). He intends it as a thought experiment with which he can show that no translation between two languages can ever be said to be absolutely necessary. Quine says that one could eventually hope to reliably convert statements in one language into the other given enough exposure to various encounters with rabbits and other objects of reference. Yet, another speaker of one’s own language faced with the same challenge would also do the same but in a completely different way. Each translation would be adequate, but inconsistent with each other. Translation is thus “indeterminate; | ||
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+ | Yet, as Jakobson (1966) points out, this only considers one aspect of the utterance, the referential value of the utterance, in isolation from the other features of language which make communication possible. In Jakobson’s model of communication, | ||
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+ | * The word //rabbit// means a furry, long-eared mammal. | ||
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+ | one attends to rabbit as a word, and the message overall informs one that when this word is used referentially, | ||
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+ | * When they say “Gavagai!, | ||
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+ | the translator is making use of a capacity already present in all modes of communication. Thus, there is no situation which requires a translator to engage in truly radical translation since no utterance will make use of only the referential function of language. The language of the utterance to be translated itself already contains the capacity to translate itself. Specifically, | ||
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+ | * The word //rabbit// is a common name for // | ||
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+ | In the field of literary translation and to an extent generally in Western culture, however, translation is often conceived as a specialized, | ||
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+ | More to the point, this model and the skepticism it engenders is quite odd given how people communicate in everyday life. It reflects a particular bias in the Western cultural understanding of how communication works. The Western model of translation emphasizes the referential function of language at the expense of the many other functions that a single utterance or text can perform. It assumes that the text to be translated can be lifted out of the context in which it is produced, and the features of the text which engage with that context can and should be neglected. If a translation fails to be transparent, | ||
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+ | Yet, in fact, most people live in worlds defined by some degree of heteroglossia even if they choose not to see this. Even monolingual speakers must encounter other ways of speaking than their own, if not other languages. In everyday communicative practices, people find many different ways to commensurate the variety of codes available for them to communicate. While none of these equivalences is necessarily better than others, and translations are always indeterminate, | ||
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+ | Consider, for instance, the stigmatized position of bilinguals in multilingual communities. Bilinguals, for instance, are always engaged in many different kinds of “natural translation” (Harris 1977). Because they regularly make use of two or more languages, but also because they are members of a heteroglossic community, they draw upon many different forms of “translanguaging, | ||
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+ | This kind of regime of linguistic otherness can perhaps be seen more clearly in the role of Western translation ideologies in Western imperialism. Translation was crucial to this process of linguistic domination, Errington argues, as a component of a larger plan to appropriate indigenous ways of speaking and transform their use by creating written forms and simplified, standardized varieties that could be used as lingua francae (Errington 2008, 45). By recognizing particular bridges between particular languages as valid, and denying the possibility of correct and complete translation from another language, colonial powers were able to establish a hierarchy of languages in which each was ranked on a scale of generality. Colonial governments, | ||
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+ | Nonetheless, | ||
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+ | According to Swaan (2013), a global political economy of language has taken shape along much the same lines as the capitalist world-system. Not only are languages stratified and ranked according to relative prestige, the exchanges between speakers of different languages are always unequal, just as the exchanges between core and periphery in the global capitalist order. English has become the center of a world language system, and serves as a useful example. English has become a form of linguistic capital in a global political economy of language. For instance, taking commercial literary production as an indicator, English is the most common source language for translation. While English is not the most common first language (L1 English), it also has the greatest number of speakers who have acquired it as a second language (L2 English). (English has the greatest number of countries which have it as a national language, and thus it would be reasonable to assume that people who learn English do so in the context of formal schooling.) Unlike speakers of even very common languages, authors working in English can assume that their works will circulate globally in both their original and translated forms. They rely on the invisibilized work of L2 English speakers. Like L2 English bilinguals in the US, they bear the burden of translation on behalf of L1 English speakers. Translation workers in the language world-system are alienated from their own translanguaging practices, and through their translational labor reproduce English as a form of linguistic capital. | ||
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+ | In anthropology, | ||
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+ | In the same way, translation often serves as a metaphor for the double consciousness of people under conditions of cultural and political domination. While translation does always take place between languages of unequal power, making translation into a metaphor for domination implicitly partakes of an epistemology of monolingualism. Throughout human history as well as today, it seems to be far more common for people to be enmeshed in dense and dynamic heteroglossic environments, | ||
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+ | ## References | ||
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+ | Asad, Talal. 1986. “The Concept of Cultural Translation in British Social Anthropology.” In Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, | ||
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+ | Errington, Joseph. 2008. Linguistics in a Colonial World: A Story of Language, Meaning, and Power. Malden, Mass.: John Wiley & Sons. | ||
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+ | Evans-Pritchard, | ||
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+ | Fabian, Johannes. 1991. Language and Colonial Power: The Appropriation of Swahili in the Former Belgian Congo 1880-1938. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press. | ||
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+ | Gal, Susan. 2015. “Politics of Translation.” Annual Review of Anthropology 44 (1): 225–40. doi: | ||
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+ | Garcia, Ofelia, and Li Wei. 2013. Translanguaging: | ||
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+ | Handman, Courtney. 2015. Critical Christianity: | ||
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+ | Hanks, William F. 2010. Converting Words: Maya in the Age of the Cross. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press. | ||
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+ | -----. 2014. “The Space of Translation.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4 (2): 17–39. doi: | ||
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+ | Harris, Brian. 1977. “The Importance of Natural Translation.” Working Papers on Bilingualism 12: 96–114. | ||
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+ | Haviland, John B. 2003. “Ideologies of Language: Some Reflections on Language and U.S. Law.” American Anthropologist 105 (4): 764–74. doi: | ||
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+ | Jakobson, Roman. 1966. “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation.” In On Translation, | ||
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+ | Leenhardt, Maurice. 1979. Do Kamo: Person and Myth in the Melanesian World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. | ||
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+ | Quine, Willard Van Orman. 1960. Word and Object. Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. | ||
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+ | Rafael, Vicente L. 1988. Contracting Colonialism: | ||
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+ | Schieffelin, | ||
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+ | Schram, Ryan. 2016. “‘Tapwaroro Is True’: Indigenous Voice and the Heteroglossia of Methodist Missionary Translation in British New Guinea.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 26 (3): 259–77. doi: | ||
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+ | Siegel, James T. 1997. Fetish, Recognition, | ||
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+ | Silverstein, | ||
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+ | Silverstein, | ||
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+ | Swaan, Abram De. 2013. Words of the World: The Global Language System. Malden, Mass.: Wiley. | ||
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+ | Urciuoli, Bonnie. 1996. Exposing Prejudice: Puerto Rican Experiences of Language, Race, and Class. Long Grove, Ill.: Waveland Press. | ||
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+ | Venuti, Lawrence. 2017. The Translator’s Invisibility: | ||
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+ | ----- | ||
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+ | <WRAP box similar> | ||