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Descriptive Research: What, How, When, For whom?

Descriptive Research: What, How, When, For whom?. «  Sire, y a-t-il des Belges?  » A century of intra- and international literary relations in Belgium (1850-1950). Lieven D ’ hulst & Reine Meylaerts – CETRA – 21/08/2008. Preliminaries. Underlying theses: make them explicit!

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Descriptive Research: What, How, When, For whom?

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  1. Descriptive Research: What, How, When, For whom? « Sire, y a-t-il des Belges? » A century of intra- and international literary relations in Belgium (1850-1950). Lieven D’hulst & Reine Meylaerts – CETRA – 21/08/2008

  2. Preliminaries • Underlying theses: make them explicit! • “Identity”: • constructed • dialogical • differential • Cf. Even-Zohar, I. 1990. Polysystem Studies. Special Issue of Poetics Today. 11.1. Durham: Duke University Press.

  3. Preliminaries • Literary identity: constructed in interaction (confrontation, opposition) with other literatures via: • import of literary translations, • critical discourse on other literatures, • personal relationships between writers, critics, …, • … etc. • Literary identity construction is dynamic • Literary relations are power relations

  4. Aim and Relevance? • Role of literary relations in literary identity construction • General relevance • Specific relevance: why Belgium?

  5. Sire, y a-t-il des Belges?

  6. Sire, y a-t-il des Belges?

  7. Sire, y a-t-il des Belges? • 1830 • Historical accident • Identity problem: multilingual, multicultural: • Dutch ~ Holland • French ~ France • German ~ Germany • ‘carrefour de l’Europe’: a transit zone

  8. State of the Art? • Previous research? • Relationship? • Strenghts? Weaknesses? Blind spots? • Belgium: • Lack of research • Unilateral ‘national’ scope • Monolingual scope

  9. Prospective Output? • General: • broadening of the study of so-called ‘monolingual’, often ‘national’ literary identities • contribute to intercultural, multilingual literary historiography • insight in literary hierarchies – dominant partners and models • insight in relations between literature and other societal fields (politics, economics) • …

  10. Prospective Output? • Specific: “provide insight in the fundamental and intricate role of intercultural contacts in the dialectics of the construction of a ‘Belgian’ – or alternative – literary identity and more specifically in the way the (problematic) self-definition of this ‘Belgian’ literature took shape and evolved through complex literary relations with other, allophone (Flemish, Dutch, German, English, American…) and homophone (French) literatures and cultures”

  11. Prospective Output? • Theoretical-Methodological? • Integration of text- and discourse-oriented DTS with actor- and institution-oriented sociological models • elaborate on (the relations between) key concepts in DTS, leading to new insights of relevance for translation theory • …

  12. Periodization? • Time span? Starting and end date? • Diachrony or synchrony or both? • Arbitrariness! • 1850: • end of pirate editions from France • start of development of autonomous Belgian literary system among other procedures through translated import • 1950: • end of French as unifying dominant language and culture

  13. Corpus? • Translations? Translations and Metatexts? • Published volumes? Translations in Periodicals? • … • Francophone Periodicals: • Translations and metatexts • privileged view of the literary system

  14. Methodology? • ~ aim & focus: dynamic process! • Don’t be slave of ‘a’ model! • Don’t be afraid of being eclectic! • Text-oriented • Discourse-oriented • Actor-oriented

  15. I. Text-oriented: Translation analysis (1) I.a. Quantitative research: • Mapping of import • Heilbron, Johan. 1999. “Towards a Sociology of Translation. Book Translations as a Cultural World-System”. European Journal of Social Theory 2(4): 429-444. • Key sectors of translated literature: • periods • literary subsystems • source literatures • genres • authors • …

  16. I. Text-oriented: Translation analysis (2) • Francophone Belgian periodicals 1850-1950: representative of: • Period: continuity and distribution • Literary subsystems • Societal evolutions • Ideological oppositions

  17. I. Text-oriented: Translation analysis (3) I.b. Descriptive translation research • DTS: Toury 1995 … • Translation Strategies: Norms! • Macro-structural aspects (titles, chapters, paragraphs…) • narratologic elements (narrator, space, point of view, character etc.) • micro-structural aspects: lexico-semantic elements, local colour, language registers, references to the (problematic) socio-cultural relations between languages and cultures, syntactic interventions, mechanisms of censorship… • …

  18. Text-oriented: Translation analysis (4) • Translation strategies (ctd.) • the language of translation: • specific literary and socio-political connotations • symbolic hierarchies between the various languages, literatures and cultures • accentuate the ideological, socio-cultural fault lines of society • form a statement on cultural identity

  19. Text-oriented: Translation analysis (5) • Sonchien s’appelait Duc, son hibou Koeb, sa chatte Mie, son serin Fientje. (Buysse 1925:60) • “Ah, ça oui, m’sieur” répondit Poover (...). (Buysse 1925:62) • Kiki, piaule-t-il la nuit, papa ne dit plus, comme dans le temps - “Ah m..., laisse le donc gueuler, l’animal, il finira bien par se taire!”(Claes 1929:528)

  20. II. Discourse-oriented:discursive practices (1) • Translated texts acquire meaning within the discursive contexts into which they are integrated, read and propagated (or censored) • Angenot, M. 1989. 1889. Un état du discours social. Québec: Le Préambule. • study the “dicible” with reference to ‘other’ literatures and cultures

  21. II. Discourse-oriented:discursive practices (2) • analysis of critical discourse on literary relations and on foreign literatures and cultures • what can/cannot/must be written about ‘other’ literatures and cultures • positive/negative dichotomies • tropes and argumentation structures representative of the image of the Other

  22. II. Discourse-oriented:discursive practices (3) From the beginning of the XIth Century, French introduced itself in Flanders with the new ideas and the whole medieval European civilization, without violence, by the natural course of things. That French has dominated Flemish, is what our common sense tells us and what history teaches us. (…) between knowing Flemish and receiving one’s entire education in this language, an abyss exists. To prevent young Flemish to receive their education in French, is to take away from them the most beautiful intellectual patrimony that one can possess. Indeed, French language is a world language, the vehicle of a powerful civilization, an instrument of first order to distribute ideas, to enlarge the mental circle where Flemish people move.(Gandavus 1918: 4-5)

  23. III. Actor-oriented:sociological research (1) • new challenge for DTS: up-to-now neglected question about the positions and roles of ‘actors’ • usefulness of a dynamic and plural subject-grounded category • many attempts to integrate the notion of ‘habitus’(Bourdieu 1972) into a descriptive approach to translation • Simeoni, D. 1998. “The Pivotal Status of the Translator’s Habitus”. Target. 10:1. 1-39.

  24. III. Actor-oriented:sociological research (2) • 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 • under the influence of his/her social position and his/her individual and collective past, every cultural actor thus develops (and continues to develop) a social identity: a certain representation of the world and of his/her position therein.

  25. III. Actor-oriented:sociological research (3) • Habitus: “[o]bviously, this concept corresponds to and reinforces the notion of norms of translation”. (Sela-Sheffy, Rakefet. 2005. “How to be a (recognized) translator: Rethinking habitus, norms, and the field of translation”. Target 17 (1): 1-26. 2.)

  26. III. Actor-oriented:sociological research (4) • Literary translators: interiorise and transform to a certain extent literary and socio-cultural, socio-political…norms • Role of translator(s) in dynamics of norms? • How do translators perceive their role as intercultural mediators? How are they perceived in this role?

  27. III. Actor-oriented:sociological research (5) • Belgium: • Strained intercultural relations (D-F) • Translators have to hover between strongly concurrential, oppositional attitudes and discursive practices concerning language, translation, identity – in one multilingual space! • Who is/has the right to be a translator? • How do one’s stylistic translational choices relate to a certain (intercultural) habitus?

  28. III. Actor-oriented:sociological research (6) • “In French but to serve Flanders!”

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