ABSTRACT
Over the past eight years, I have had the privilege to host in our department five brilliant postdoctoral researchers from all over the globe. They have all, in various ways, been instrumental in shaping my thinking on the nature of translation by confronting me with a variety of data about translator and translation practice, and conflicting ideas about translation and translation studies. This introductory narrative serves both as acknowledgment of their scholarship, friendship, and formative influence on my thinking, and as evidence of the wide variety of translation processes and phenomena that occurs across the world.
Sergey Tyulenev asked hard questions about translation being only about language—or even about meaning—using his in-depth knowledge of, among other fields, Luhmann’s systems sociology to explore the range of meanings of the notion of ‘inter,’ including the possibility that ‘inter’ is a purely logical category applicable to all of reality.
In our discussions, Caroline Mangerel presented fascinating data concerning semiotic process. One of her most famous examples involves translations of The Count of Monte Christo. She illustrates how this novel has been translated into different languages, and also into movies, cartoons, video games, and other media. She goes on to show a Japanese series with the title The Count of Monte Christo in which nothing but the title bears any relationship to the original novel. On basis of this data, she asks questions about the boundaries of translation. Is this Japanese series a translation of The Count of Monte Christo? If it is, is it a different type of translation, theoretically speaking, then interlingual translations? What are the minimum requirements for anything to be called a translation, because Japanese viewers would not necessarily regard these series as translations in the sense that Toury’s conceptualization of translation (as something regarded as a translation by the target culture) requires.
David Orrego Carmona told stories about colleagues who did not want to admit that his research on fan-subbing falls under translation studies. They argue that translation studies should study only 2professional translation. David’s data raise the following question: If modern communication and entertainment are increasingly multimedial, or multimodal, what is the relevance of definitions of translation that are limited to interlingual translation?
If DJ Afro, in Nairobi, Kenya, deletes the soundtracks on DVDs, and replaces it with that of soap operas from Hollywood or Bollywood, and adds his own text and even political commentary, is he a translator? How do you deal with being a refugee and being selected to act as an interpreter for the authorities, thereby holding in your hands the future of fellow refugees, who are your neighbors when you return to your tent at night? Are you translating or interpreting when you, as an ad hoc interpreter in a refugee camp, read questions from a list, but not in the language in which they are written? Carmen Delgado brought these and other questions to our discussions in the Department.
In a setting of religious interpreting in Turkey, Duygu Tekgul had to consider whether you can call someone a professional translator if this person interprets in a church, views her role as professional, and tries to submit to all professional requirements, but does not want to be paid (because her aim is rendering a service), has had no training and has no contract. Is the question about professionalism even relevant in the context? Duygu also confronted me with data about blogs aimed at popularizing scientific findings, and about the role translation plays in crossing both the boundary between expert and lay person (intralingual translation), and distributing the information across linguistic boundaries (interlingual translation) through a variety of modes (intersemiotic translation).
To these kinds of questions, I can add those that my news-translation colleague faces on a daily basis. Marlie van Rooyen deals with the reality that it is impossible to determine how many source texts there were for a particular news bulletin. It is equally impossible to determine how many target texts (spoken news, written news, twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.) a news story, as source text, causes. Another colleague, Monnapula Molefe, studies all kinds of versions of public-service interpreting and translation, and found that people in the Global South find ways of communicating, despite a lack of political will to serve them in this regard. What about interpreting between animals and humans, is the question my interpreting colleague, Xany Jansen van Vuuren, is investigating in cases of ad-hoc interpreting during animal-welfare outreaches.
From all corners of the world, in this case, Russia, Canada, Columbia, Switzerland, Turkey, and South Africa, I have, thus, been confronted with data and ideas about translation processes and phenomena that question a conceptualization of translation that is limited to language, the formal economy, professional circles, or high literature (Marais & Feinauer, 2017).