How to avoid a Sociology of Translation without Translations?

How to avoid a Sociology of Translation without Translations? Towards a Sociological Construction of the Individual Reine Meylaerts FWO-KULeuven International Conference “Translating and Interpreting as a Social Practice”, Graz, 5-7/5/2005.

Translation Studies’ Object? • Analysis of intercultural dynamics in which cultures = dynamic networks of relations • between cultural products: cultural products are first of all in (hierarchical) relation to each other - study of norms and models governing these products and their hierarchies: product internal – discursive practices • between cultures and other societal systems/fields • between cultural institutions • between cultural actors: producers and consumers • between (all) these domains and the various ways in which actors internalise these cultural networks, their discursive, institutional and other structures and their mutual relationships dynamically

DTS and Sociology: a Hot Topic Challenge = • work out a real symmetry between actor-oriented sociological approaches and communication-oriented semiotic approaches • a combination of research levels and paradigms

DTS and Sociology: a Hot Topic A theoretical framework • stands or falls by its relevance in various cultural frameworks • success of a model depends on the problem that one wishes to investigate • is itself part of historical dynamics Therefore: • observe and test the models’ compatibility and complementarity

Towards a Sociological Construction of the Individual Autopoiesis and self-referentiality indeed have their limits in social systems: • communication-oriented paradigms cannot ignore human agency • actor-oriented paradigms have to take into account the conditions and conventions of communication (text and discourse) analysis

DTS and Sociology: a Hot Topic What do actor-oriented sociological models (field theory, network analysis…) study? • stress the role that actors (authors, translators) and institutions (publishing houses, committees) play in the production and circulation of translations • BUT: fail to conceptualise product (translation) and its reception = serious lack • Translated text and its discursive context (reception) remain blind spots; absence of study of norms and models that govern products and their hierarchies: product internal – discursive practices • Cf. cultural product only signifies in relation to other (previous and actual) products and through the various discourses in which it is integrated

Toury’s DTS What do communication oriented models do? • study translated text and its reception through study of the norms and models that govern products and their hierarchies: product internal – discursive practices • BUT: the question of agency behind (translational) norms is not studied(Simeoni 1998) • bad reputation of « gloriously overlook[ing] the human agent, the translator » (Hermans 1995 :222) or to reduce him more or less to his professional profile • “translator” = absent in subject index Toury 1995 • no conceptualization of the human subject, of the actor

Translator? “ ‘translatorship’ amounts first and foremost to being able to play a social role, i.e. to fulfil a function allotted by a community – to the activity, its practitioners and/or their products – in a way which is deemed appropriate in its own terms of reference. The acquisition of a set of norms for determining the suitability of that kind of behaviour, and for manoeuvring between all the factors which may constrain it, is therefore a prerequisite for becoming a translator within a cultural environment”(Toury 1995:53)

Translators and Norms? • “translators performing under different conditions (…) often adopt different strategies, and ultimately come up with markedly different products” (Toury 1995:54) • “translation behaviour within a culture tends to manifest certain regularities” (56) • “It is unrealistic to expect absolute regularities anyway, in any behavioural domain.” (57) • “a translator’s behaviour cannot be expected to be fully systematic” (67)

Translators and Norms? “Operational norms (…) may be described as serving as a model, in accordance with which translations come into being, whether involving the norms realized by the source text (i.e., adequate translation) plus certain modifications, or purely target norms or a particular compromise between the two. Every model supplying performance instructions may said to act as a restricting factor: it opens up certain options, while closing others. Consequently, when the first position is fully adopted, the translation can hardly be said to have been made into the target language as a whole. Rather, it is made into a model-language, which is at best some part of the former and at worst an artificial, and as such nonexistent variety. In this last case, the translation is not really introduced into the target culture either, but is imposed on it, so to speak. Sure, it may eventually carve a niche for itself in the latter, but there is no initial attempt to accommodate it to any existing ‘slot’. On the other hand, when the second position is adopted, what a translator is introducing into the target culture (which is indeed what s/he can be described as doing now) is a version of the original work, cut to the measure of a preexisting model.” (Toury 1995:60-61)

Translators and Norms? “Of course, it is not as if all translators are passive in face of these changes [of norms]. Rather, many of them, through their very activity help in shaping the process as do translation criticism, translation ideology (…), and, of course, various norms setting activities of institutes where, in many societies, translators are now being trained. Wittingly or unwittingly, they all try to interfere with the ‘natural’ course of events and to divert it according to their own preferences. Yet, the success of their endeavours is never fully foreseeable. In fact, the relative role of different agents in the overall dynamics of translational norms is still largely a matter of conjecture even for times past, and much more research is needed to clarify it.” (Toury 1995:62)

Translators and Norms ? • mostly text-bound model but in a sense also too sociological • implicit presupposition: precedence of structure (the collective) over agency (the individual) • solution for the neglecting of the individual = personification of the collective (cf. Durkheim) • no conceptualisation of the human agent as a socialised individual • conclusion: theory of the social subject is needed: a sociology at the individual level, analysing the social reality in its individualized, incorporated, internalised form

Towards a Sociological Construction of the Individual • analyse intercultural dynamics as a heterogenous reality of both collectively and individually motivated selection practices • This is lacking in both actor-oriented and communication-oriented paradigms: the individual and the collective are naïvely separated: they are both erronously relying on traditional sociology • Enormous lack in the sociological construction of the individual • until now: sociology has had difficulties with the notion of the ‘individual’ and has offered bad solution of the problem of the link between society and individual

Towards a Sociological Construction of the Individual • What are the relations between the (more/less) individual and the (more/less) collective? • How do structure and agency relate to each other? • How do norms and translators relate to each other? • What are the individualised forms of the social?

Towards a Sociological Construction of the Individual Relations between human agent and collective structures? • Crucial question is that of the usability of habitus concept for a functional, text- and discourse-oriented model of interlingual translation. • Until 1998, the notion of habitus was never applied to the field of interlingual translation

Habitus? • the subjects’ internalised system of social structures in the form of dispositions • dispositions engender practices, perceptions and attitudes which are regular but not necessarily fixed or invariant • frequently criticised for being deterministic (Sheffy, Geldof), and static, for implying “a one-directional and invariable imprint of social positions on people’s actions” (Sheffy).

Habitus? • motor of a dialectic between a theory of effects and a theory of strategies • escape a philosophy of the subject without sacrificing the agents • escape a philosophy of structure without refusing to take into account the effects it exerts on the agent and through him (Bourdieu 1992, 97)

Habitus? • Bourdieu presupposes the unity of individual cultural habitus • too much linked to the uniqueness and the permanence of the person • I.e.implicit presupposition of precedence of structure over agency, due to believe in homogeneity of cultural situations from the viewpoint of cultural legitimacy • Is it possible to leave or to expand your habitus? • To what extent is one prisoner of his/her habitus?

Lahire’s Habitus? • plural concept: individual socialisations are always the result of a multitude of influences and socializing experiences • possible plurality of dispositions and identities of an individual:a disposition is not necessarily transcontextual • the individual actor doesn’t invariably use the same habitus or system of dispositions but possesses a plurality of dispositions and goes through a plurality of social contexts • an individuation of collective schemes leading to a heterogeneity of cultural choices

Lahire’s Habitus? • dynamic concept: • object of confrontations with various field logics and thus of multiple discontinuities • complex product of multiple processes of socialization disseminated in various institutions (family, schools, friends, work, neighbourhood…)

Lahire’s Habitus? • habitus of a cultural actor is the elaborate result of a personal, professional, cultural… history” • Multiform, dynamic habitus concept: • thoughtful answer to the relation between structure and agency (structure not necessarily priority) • thoughtful answer to the question how cultural actors interiorise dynamically and variably certain norms and models • thoughtful answer on the question how actors interiorise cultural networks, their discursive, institutional and other structures and their underlying relationships dynamically and variably

Habitus? • with regard to translation: the actual products of translation are thus the results of diversely distributed social habituses (Simeoni 1998) • “Modern sociographies of single translators’ professional trajectories are sorely lacking”. • “The habitus of the translator is the elaborate result of a personal, professional, cultural… history” • “A habitus-led reorganization of the facts of translation will force finer-grain analyses of the socio-cognitive emergence of translating skills and their outcome, in particular at the micro-level of stylistic variation” (Simeoni).

Translator’s Habitus? • What’s the translator’s socio-linguistic profile in a given context? • How to explain his stylistic options? • Who has the right to be a translator? • Why does a translator stop translating? Answers to these and other questions do not exclusively depend on individual nor on collective factors but ask for an analysis of the relations between structure and agency. !! All this in combination with a multilevel approach: texts (selection – textual strategies) and contexts (discursive and institutional structures)

How to avoid a Sociology of Translation without Translations?