Postcolonialism

In 1993 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak was the one who introduced postcolonialism. Post-colonialism is one of the most thriving points of contact between Cultural Studies and Translation Studies. It can be defined as a broad cultural approach to the study of power relations between different groups, cultures or peoples in which language, literature and translation may play a role. Spivak’s work is indicative of how cultural studies and especially post-colonialism has over the past decade focused on issues of translation, the translational and colonization. The linking of colonization and translation is accompanied by the argument that translation has played an active role in the colonization process and in disseminating an ideologically motivated image of colonized people. The metaphor has been used of the colony as an imitative and inferior translational copy whose suppressed identity has been overwritten by the colonizer.

The postcolonial concepts may have conveyed a view of translation as just a damaging instrument of the colonizers who imposed their language and used translation to construct a distorted image of the suppressed people which served to reinforce the hierarchal structure of the colony. However, some critics of post-colonialism, like Robinson, believe that the view of the translation as purely harmful and pernicious tool of the empire is inaccurate.

Like the other cultural theorists, Venuti in 1995 insisted that the scope of translation studies needs to be broadened to take the account of the value-driven nature of sociocultural framework. He used the term invisibility to describe the translator situation and activity in Anglo-American culture. He said that this invisibility is produced by:

1- The way the translators themselves tend to translate fluently into English, to produce an idiomatic and readable TT, thus creating illusion of transparency.

2- The way the translated texts are typically read in the target culture:

“A translated text, whether prose or poetry or non-fiction, is judged acceptable by most publishers, reviewers and readers when it reads fluently, when the absence of any linguistic or stylistic peculiarities makes it seem transparent, giving the appearance that it reflects the foreign writer’s personality or intention or the essential meaning the foreign text_ the appearance, in other words, that the translation is not in fact a translation, but the original.”

(Venuti, 1995)

Venuti discussed invisibility hand in hand with two types of translating strategies: domestication and foreignization. He considered domestication as dominating Anglo-American (TL) translation culture. Just as the postcolonialists were alert to the cultural effects of the differential in power relation between colony and ex-colony, so Venuti bemoaned the phenomenon of domestication since it involves reduction of the foreign text to the target language cultural values. This entails translating in a transparent, fluent, invisible style in order to minimize the foreignness of the TT. Venuti believed that a translator should leave the reader in peace, as much as possible, and he should move the author toward him.

Foregnization, on the other hand, entails choosing a foreign text and developing a translation method along lines which excluded by dominant cultural values in target language. Ventuti considers the foreignizing method to be an ethno deviant pressure on target language cultural values to register the linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign text, sending the reader abroad. According to him it is highly desirable in an effort to restrain the ethnocentric violence translation. The foreignizing method of translating, a strategy Venuti also termed ‘ resistancy ’, is a non-fluent or estranging translation style designed to make visible the persistence of translator by highlighting the foreign identity of ST and protecting it from the ideological dominance of the target culture.

In his later book ‘ The Scandals of Translation ’ Venuti insisted on foreignizing or, as he also called it, ‘ minoritizing ’ translatin, to cultivate a varied and heterogeneous discourse. As far as language is concerned, the minoritizing or foriegnizing method of Venuti’s translation comes through in the deliberate inclusion of foreignizing elements in a bid to make the translator visible and to make the reader realize that he is reading a translation of the work from a foreign culture. Foreignization is close adherent to the ST structure and syntax.

Venuti also said that the terms may change meaning across time and location.

In 1996, Simon mentioned that cultural studies brings to translation an understanding of the complexities of gender and culture and it allows us to situate linguistic transfer. She considered a language of sexism in translation studies, with its image of dominance, fidelity, faithfulness and betrayal. She mentioned the seventeenth century image of “les belles infidels” (unfaithful beauties), translations into French that were artistically beautiful but unfaithful. She went further and investigated George Steiner’s male-oriented image of translation as penetration.

The feminist theorists, more or less, see a parallel between the status of translation which is often considered to be derivative and inferior to the original writing and that of women so often repressed in society and literature. This is the core feminist translation that theory seeks to identify and critique the tangle of the concepts which relegate both women and translation to the bottom of the social and literary ladder. Simon takes this further in the concept of the committed translation project. Translation project here can be defined as such: An approach to literary translation in which feminist translators openly advocate and implement strategies (linguistic or otherwise) to foreground the feminist in the translated text. It may seem worthy to mention that the opposite of translation project occurs when gender-marked works are translated in such a way that their distinctive characteristics are affected.

With the spread of deconstruction and cultural studies in the academy, the subject of ideology became an important area of study. The field of translation studies presents no exception to this general trend. It should also be mentioned that the concept of ideology is not something new and it has been an area of interest from a long time ago. The problem of discussing translation and ideology is one of definition. There are so many definitions of ideology that it is impossible to review them all. For instance as Hatim and Mason (1997) stated that ideology encompasses the tacit assumptions, beliefs and value systems which are shared collectively by social groups. They make a distinction between the ideology of translating and the translation of ideology. Whereas the former refers to the basic orientation chosen by the translator operating within a social and cultural context. In translation of ideology they examined the extent of mediation supplied by a translator of sensitive texts. Here mediation is defined as the extent to which translators intervene in the transfer process, feeding their own knowledge and beliefs into processing the text.

In 1999 Hermans stated that Culture refers to all socially conditioned aspects of human life. According to him translation can and should be recognized as a social phenomenon, a cultural practice. He said that we bring to translation both cognitive and normative expectations, which are continually being negotiated, confirmed, adjusted, and modified by practicing translators and by all who deal with translation. These expectations result from the communication within the translation system, for instance, between actual translations and statements about translation, and between the translation system and other social systems.

In 2002, regarding cultural translation Hervey and Higgins believed in cultural translation rather than literal one. According to them accepting literal translation means that there’s no cultural translation operation. But obviously there are some obstacles bigger than linguistic ones. They are cultural obstacles and here a transposition in culture is needed.

According to Hervey & Higgins cultural transposition has a scale of degrees which are toward the choice of features indigenous to target language and culture rather than features which are rooted in source culture. The result here is foreign features reduced in target text and is to some extent naturalized. The scale here is from an extreme which is mostly based on source culture (exoticism) to the other extreme which is mostly based on target culture (cultural transplantation):

Exoticism< Calque< Cultural Borrowing< Communicative Translation< cultural transplantation

1) Exoticism
The degree of adaptation is very low here. The translation carries the cultural features and grammar of SL to TL. It is very close to transference.

2) Calque
Calque includes TL words but in SL structure therefore while it is unidiomatic to target reader but it is familiar to a large extent.

3) Cultural Borrowing
It is to transfer the ST expression verbatim into the TT. No adaptation of SL expression into TL forms. After a time they usually become a standard in TL terms. Cultural borrowing is very frequent in history, legal, social, political texts; for example, “La langue” and “La parole” in linguistics.

4) Communicative Translation
Communicative translation is usually adopted for culture specific clichés such as idioms, proverbs, fixed expression, etc. In such cases the translator substitutes SL word with an existing concept in target culture. In cultural substitution the propositional meaning is not the same but it has similar impact on target reader. The literal translation here may sound comic. The degree of using this strategy some times depends on the license which is given to the translator by commissioners and also the purpose of translation.

5) Cultural Transplantation
The whole text is rewritten in target culture. The TL word is not a literal equivalent but has similar cultural connotations to some extent. It is another type of extreme but toward target culture and the whole concept is transplanted in TL. A normal translation should avoid both exoticism and cultural transplantation.

In 2004, Nico Wiersema in his essay “globalization and translation” stated that globalization is linked to English being a lingua franca; the language is said to be used at conferences (interpreting) and seen as the main language in the new technologies. The use of English as a global language is an important trend in world communication. Globalisation is also linked to the field of Translation Studies. Furthermore, globalisation is placed in the context of changes in economics, science, technology, and society. Globalization and technology are very helpful to translators in that translators have more access to online information, such as dictionaries of lesser-known languages. According to him such comments can be extended to the readers of translations. Should the target text be challenging for a reader, the internet can help him understand foreign elements in the text. Thus the text can be written in a more foreignising / exoticising manner. He mentioned a relatively new trend wherein culturally bound elements (some, one might say, untranslatable), are not translated. He believed that this trend contributes to learning and understanding foreign cultures. Context explains culture, and adopting (not necessarily adapting) a selection of words enriches the target text, makes it more exotic and thus more interesting for those who want to learn more about the culture in question. Eventually, these new words may find their way into target language dictionaries. Translators will then have contributed to enriching their own languages with loan words from the source language (esp. English).

He considered this entering loan words into TL as an important aspect of translation. Translation brings cultures closer. He stated that at this century the process of globalization is moving faster than ever before and there is no indication that it will stall any time soon. In each translation there will be a certain distortion between cultures. The translator will have to defend the choices he/she makes, but there is currently an option for including more foreign words in target texts. Therefore, it is now possible to keep SL cultural elements in target texts. In each translation there will be a certain distortion between cultures. The translator will have to defend the choices he/she makes, but there is currently an option for including more foreign words in target texts.

According to him translator has three options for the translation of cultural elements:

1- Adopting the foreign word without any explanation.
2- Adopting the foreign word with extensive explanations.
3- Rewriting the text to make it more comprehensible to the target-language audience.

According to Nico Wiersema (2004), Cultures are getting closer and closer and this is something that he believed translators need to take into account. In the end it all depends on what the translator, or more often, the publisher wants to achieve with a certain translation. In his opinion by entering SL cultural elements:

a- The text will be read more fluently (no stops)
b- The text remains more exotic, more foreign
c- The translator is closer to the source culture
d- The reader of the target texts gets a more genuine image of the source culture.

In 2004, ke Ping regarding translation and culture paid attention to misreading and presupposition. He mentioned that of the many factors that may lead to misreadings in translation is cultural presuppositions.

Cultural presuppositions merit special attention from translators because they can substantially and systematically affect their interpretation of facts and events in the source text without their even knowing it. He pinpointed the relationship between cultural presuppositions and translational misreadings. According to him misreadings in translation are often caused by a translator’s presuppositions about the reality of the source language community. These presuppositions are usually culturally-derived and deserve the special attention of the translator. He showed how cultural presuppositions work to produce misreadings in translation.

According to ke Ping “Cultural presupposition,” refers to underlying assumptions, beliefs, and ideas that are culturally rooted, widespread.

· According to him anthropologists agree on the following features of culture:

(1) Culture is socially acquired instead of biologically transmitted;
(2) Culture is shared among the members of a community rather than being unique to an individual;
(3) Culture is symbolic. Symbolizing means assigning to entities and events meanings which are external to them and which cannot be grasped alone. Language is the most typical symbolic system within culture;
(4) Culture is integrated. Each aspect of culture is tied in with all other aspects.

· According to ke Ping culture is normally regarded as comprising, with some slight variations, the following four sub-systems:

(1) Techno-economic System:
ecology (flora, fauna, climate, etc.); means of production, exchange, and distribution of goods; crafts, technology, and science; artifacts.

(2) Social System:
social classes and groups; kinship system (typology, sex and marriage, procreation and paternity, size of family, etc.); politics and law; education; sports and entertainment; customs; general history.

(3) Ideational System:
cosmology; religion; magic and witchcraft; folklore; artistic creations as images; values (moral, aesthetic, etc.); cognitive focus and thinking patterns; ideology.

(4) Linguistic System:
phonology and graphemics; grammar (morphology and syntax); semantics and pragmatics.

Each ingredient in these four sub-systems can lead to presuppositions that are fundamentally different from those bred by other cultures, and hence might result in misreading when translation or other forms of communication are conducted across two cultures. ke Ping introduced some of these culture-bound presuppositions as observed in mistranslated texts which include:

a- Cultural presupposition related to techno-economic system.
b- Cultural presupposition related to social systems.
c- Cultural presupposition related to ideational system.
d- Cultural presupposition related to linguistic systems.