Corps de l’article

In an entertaining article questioning the legitimacy of Translation Studies (TS) as a discipline, Singh (2007: 58) asserts that it “is perhaps the only field in the human and social sciences that seems NOT to focus on theoretical questions of its own,” and that wants “to establish itself on grounds that can be said to be maximally non-autonomist.” While we could dismiss Singh’s opinion as that of an outsider, we certainly cannot do likewise with similar opinions expressed by translation scholars. Venuti (1998: 8), for instance, has these terms to denounce the marginalization of TS in academia: “it is not quite a discipline in its own right, more an interdiscipline that straddles a range of fields depending on its particular institutional setting.” And because Venuti was not calling for academic rigidity but for more openness, particularly to Cultural Studies, Pym (1998) thought that he “somehow floated above translation studies and entered opinions about the world’s cultures.” Such remarks reflect a growing anxiety as regards the disciplinary identity of TS and its epistemological location within the humanities and social sciences. They also raise several questions. One could indeed ask Singh how to delineate theoretical issues so that they are certain to be exclusive to one discipline? Or ask Venuti how to delimit the borders of a discipline so that it becomes “a discipline in its own right”? One could also beg of Pym to explain how a translation scholar can talk of translation without talking of culture.

Translation Studies at the Interface of Disciplines provides answers to such questions, giving a valuable insight into the crossdisciplinary nature of TS. It is a collection of 13 papers selected from the conference “Translation (Studies): A Crossroads of Disciplines,” held in the Faculty of Letters, University of Lisbon, in 2002. The papers are organized in three parts: “New perspectives on the disciplinary space of translation,” “Theoretical models at work,” and “Texts and contexts in translation.” In the introduction, the editors set the tone of the book by making a strong case for the crossdisciplinary, or the “ghost-like,” nature of Translation Studies. Drawing on Nouss’ (2005) conception of translation as métissage, i.e., an interweaving of disciplines and a migration of ideas across borders (p. 3), they do not perceive the importation into TS of theoretical models and methodologies from other disciplines as threatening or undermining. Quite the contrary, they argue that such an interfacing allows “the discovery of new areas of ignorance” (p. 1).

Responding directly to this stance, Andrew Chesterman highlights the value of insight from sociology. He, thus, calls for “the sociology of translation” which includes the sociology of translations, the sociology of translators and the sociology of translating. He argues that while many of the theoretical models currently used in the sociological study of translation belong to either one of the first two sub-areas or to both of them at once, research has been scarce on the sociology of translating. To attend to this gap, he proposes the application of the concept of a practice and the actor-network theory, both borrowed from Sociology, to Translation Studies. In an almost identical vein, Yves Gambier points out that what he calls “sociotranslation,” which concerns itself with the study of both translators and translations, and “socio-translation studies,” which looks into the status of the discipline, among other issues, would both help Translation Studies to mature out of its current multidisciplinarity into a more “coherent” discipline. In fact, he affirms that TS conceptual borrowings overlap and are not put into perspective, which results in fragmentation (p. 35). Annjo Klungervik Greenall seems to subscribe to the same idea insofar as she argues that TS is currently more multidisciplinary than interdisciplinary (p. 68) and that a first step towards interdisciplinarity, and thus independence, would be the fusion of the linguistic and cultural approaches in TS. She proposes the Bakhtinian dialogism as a model that allows for such a fusion.

In an excellent article that would, however, fit better into a volume about methodology in TS, Gideon Toury argues that much of the knowledge translation scholars claim to have and base their research on is but a set of “imported assumptions from other fields of knowledge” (p. 57) regardless of their ability to account for the complexities of translation. He, therefore, urges researchers to consider their claims of knowledge as assumptions or questions to “start looking for answers in a controlled way” (p. 65). As to M. Rosario Martin Ruano, she takes issue with the model of theoretical integration which calls for the creation of a common ground in TS. She argues that approaches subscribing to it suffer from theoretical contradictions, and makes a valid point by asserting (p. 50) that disciplinary pluralism is much more suited to the “complex, plural, multifaceted phenomenon” that is translation.

While not discussing interdisciplinarity directly, contributions in the second part bring out the value of importing and adapting concepts and theories in TS. Thus, Reine Meylaerts uses functional descriptive studies of heteroglossia in translated prose to investigate how dominant and dominated cultures/languages fare in translation, contending that such an approach can “enhance our understanding of literary identity construction and cultural dynamics” (p. 86). Alexandra Assis Rosa imports the notions of “actual reader” and “implied reader” from literary theory to define target text readers. She argues that these notions can be valuable not only in identifying initial norms but also in conducting descriptive-explanatory studies of translation (p. 106-107). Using Critical Language Study, also known as critical discourse analysis, Karen Bennett uncovers different value systems underlying English and Portuguese academic discourse. In translation, this difference may be erased to the benefit of the hegemonic English academic discourse and to the detriment of the Portuguese discourse, causing an “epistemicide.” Critical discourse analysis is equally central to Matthew Wing-Kwong Leung’s article devoted to the discussion of the ideological turn in TS and its import. Leung maintains that “[c]ritical discourse analysis with part of its roots in linguistic analysis, and another part in ideological aspiration […] provides a fruitful opportunity for cross-disciplinary fertilization with Translation Studies” (p. 142).

Similarly, the third section sheds light on the contribution of other disciplines, albeit indirectly, through the exploration of interplay between text and context in translation. In a study that could easily be subsumed under Chesterman’s “sociology of translations” and “sociology of translators” as seen above, Li Xia provides a historical overview of early translation activities in China and explores the prominent part translators played in the spread of Buddhism in early Chinese society. Xia’s objective is “to make the enduring effect of translators […] more visible, and translation as a scholarly discipline more open” (p. 149). Another study on the social impact of translation is that of Maria Jose Alves Veiga who highlights the key role of audiovisual translation, and specifically subtitling, in Portuguese students’ lives. She concludes that audiovisual translators need more visibility and more legal protection, and calls for “a strategy of audiovisual translation awareness within the Portuguese translation studies scenario” (p. 166). In a quite original piece, Alexandra Lopes looks into the Portuguese translation of an English novel set in Portugal, and asks (p. 173) “how does one translate the self as seen through the eyes […] of the other?” She answers that in so doing, translators tend to fall into the trap of overtranslatability. Because of their “timidity and lack of boldness” and out of blind fidelity, they translate everything, including information the target reader already knows. She announces that it is time “to empower translators” and “to grant translation its rightful place in the continuity of discourses that make up culture” (p. 182). Finally, Dionisio Martínez Soler examines a collection of poems presented as original while they are, in fact, a translation. This case study calls into question notions of original and translation and sheds light on the social and cultural dimensions of translation.

While the volume comprises strong and illuminating contributions, it suffers from an organization problem. Indeed, articles within a single part do not always respond to a noticeable common thread. Greenall’s article, for instance, would best fit in the second part entitled “Theoretical models at work.” Besides, it would seem that some papers engage little, if at all, in the subject matter of the volume. While all the contributions in the third part are certainly very interesting and some of them may be subsumed under the broad category of sociological studies of translation, they do not bring concepts or models from other disciplines to bear on their discussion of translation issues, just as they do not bring out any type of interface between TS and other disciplines. In addition, the volume could have benefitted from a little more diversity and richness as far as issues under scrutiny are concerned. Several papers focused on interface with sociology, but none dealt with interface with anthropology or ethnography, two disciplines that are increasingly informing research in TS (cf. Buzelin 2007; Sturge 2007 and Wolf 1997).

Overall, however, the volume is a very good and accessible read, one that should be specifically recommended to all those who, like Singh, would have us believe that TS is less of a discipline for straying away from linguistics. TS has come a long way in a few decades precisely because it opened up to other disciplines. The turns it has already taken in the course of its still ongoing development has allowed scholars to come to grips with various translation phenomena that linguistics alone could not account for. It is true that work is still to be done as regards “mapping some borders or boundaries or limits for the inquiry about translation, even if these borders do not form a closed figure,” as Tymozcko (2005: 1086) aptly puts it. We can already see, however, the contours of TS as a field of knowledge that transcends the traditional definition of a discipline or even of an interdiscipline, and that represents, in fact, “a principle of flux, of unceasing intersections and realignments, an interfacing domain where thought becomes nomadic, where a multiplicity of language-games can co-exist, intermingle and cross-fertilize” (Duarte et al. 2006: 4).