首页 Polysystem theory Its prospect as__ a framework for translation research

Polysystem theory Its prospect as__ a framework for translation research

Polysystem theory Its prospect as__ a framework for translation research (c) John Benjamins Delivered by Ingenta on: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 16:05:11 to: The John Rylands University Library, The University of Manchester IP: 130.88.65.237 Polysystem theory Target 13:2 (2001), 317–332. issn 0924–1884/e-issn 1569-9986 © 2002 John Ben...

(c) John Benjamins Delivered by Ingenta on: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 16:05:11 to: The John Rylands University Library, The University of Manchester IP: 130.88.65.237 Polysystem theory Target 13:2 (2001), 317–332. issn 0924–1884/e-issn 1569-9986 © 2002 John Benjamins Publishing Company Its prospect as a framework for translation research* Nam Fung Chang Lingnan University, Hong Kong This article deals with three interrelated issues: ﬁrst the ‘cultural turn’ of Itamar Even-Zohar in contrast to the ‘cultural turn’ in Translation Studies, then the application of an augmented version of Polysystem theory in a short case study, and ﬁnally the question of objectivity and neutrality in descrip- tive polysystem studies. It is argued that Polysystem theory and other cultur- al theories of translation, be they descriptive or politically committed, can be mutually enriching rather than incompatible, and that, with some augmen- tation and further development, it may serve as an adequate framework for research into the ‘external politics’ of translation. Keywords: polysystem, polysystem theory, norm, translation studies, cultur- al turn, ideology, politics, descriptivism 1. Two ‘cultural turns’ Developed in the 1970s, Itamar Even-Zohar’s Polysystem hypothesis was originally designed as a theoretical framework for the descriptive study of literature and language in their cultural context. His theory has made a great impact on the discipline of Translation Studies, and a ‘school’ is said to have been formed under its inﬂuence. The attraction of his theory to some transla- tion scholars presumably lies in theprospect that, as Even-Zohar states (1979:300), “the complicated questions of how literature correlates with language, society, economy, politics, ideology, etc., may here, with the PS theory, merit less simplistic and reductionist hypotheses than otherwise”. Facilitated by Poly- system theory, these scholars have taken a ‘cultural turn’ (Hermans 1999:110), (c) John Benjamins Delivered by Ingenta on: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 16:05:11 to: The John Rylands University Library, The University of Manchester IP: 130.88.65.237 318 Nam Fung Chang focusing their attention on the ‘external politics’ of translation. Paradoxically, it is also a movement away from Polysystem theory on the part of a number of scholars, mainly because they ﬁnd the theory inadequate as “a comprehensive theoretical and methodological framework that can encompass the social and ideological embedding and impact of translation” (Hermans 1996:41). Theo Hermans (1996, 1999) has made some initial attempts to develop such a framework by extending Gideon Toury’s concept of norms. However, it appears from a recent discussion (in Schäﬀner 1998) that “the norms governing translation in their totality (that is, the overall ‘normative model’ a translation event is subject to)” (Toury 1998:23) are still a fuzzy notion. While Toury (1998:23) states that the value of these norms “is likely to be diﬀerent due to its diﬀerent systemic position”, Hermans mentions three normative levels: general cultural and ideological norms which may be held to apply throughout the larger part of a community; translational norms arising from general concepts of translatability and cross-lingual representation alive in that community; and the textual and other appropriateness norms which prevail in the particular client system for which individual translations cater. (1998:60) But what are the respective values and systemic positions of these norms and their interrelations? And how do they work together or compete with one another to form the resultant overall ‘normative model’? — These questions still remain unanswered. Even-Zohar also started to take a ‘cultural turn’ in the 1990s, in the sense that he shifted his research interest from language and literature to culture in general. This is most clearly seen in two of his recent articles. First, in his 1997 version of “Polysystem theory” (Even-Zohar 1997a) he has turned the theory explicitly into a theory of culture by deleting speciﬁc references to language, literature and translation. Secondly, and most importantly, in “Factors and dependencies in culture: A revised outline for Polysystem culture research” he presents a scheme “for the constitutive factors involved with any socio-semiotic (cultural) event” (1997b:19): institution repertoire producer consumer market product This scheme, when it ﬁrst appeared in “The ‘literary system’” in 1990, was designed to account for “the macro-factors involved with the function of the literary system” only (1990:32). (c) John Benjamins Delivered by Ingenta on: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 16:05:11 to: The John Rylands University Library, The University of Manchester IP: 130.88.65.237 Polysystem theory 319 Themotivations behind the two cultural turns are quite diﬀerent.While the translation scholars who have taken such a turn wish to focus on the ‘external politics’ of translation, Even-Zohar does so in the belief that System, or better: relational, thinking has provided the sciences of man with versatile tools to economize in the analysis of socio-semiotic phenomena. This approach has allowed the signiﬁcant reduction of the number of parameters assumed to work in any given context, thus making it possible to get rid of huge nomenclatures and intricate classiﬁcations. Instead, a relatively small set of relations could be hypothesized to explain a large and complex array of phenomena. (1997b:15) Therefore, he has got rid of the classiﬁcation of polysystems into categories such as politics, ideology, economics, literature and language, in order to foreground the universal features of all polysystems and formulate a general theory of culture. In fact, the very word ‘polysystem’ is not used at all in the second part of the article, where the revised scheme is presented. Moreover, he has reduced the number of factors involved to only three: institution, repertoire andmarket, besides the direct participants of the event (producer and consumer) and the product itself. This scheme certainly has the virtue of economy, andmay provide a general orientation for polysystem culture research. But when it is used as a framework for research into any particular polysystem, it may need to be revised and elaborated in light of the special features of the polysystem to be investigated.1 Take for example the factor of ‘repertoire’, which “designates the aggregate of rules and materials which govern both themaking and handling, or produc- tion and consumption, of any given product” (Even-Zohar 1997b:20). If the object of study is a translated literary text, then the materials are provided mainly by the linguistic and literary polysystems, such as lexical items and rhetorical devices, but the rules that determine the usability of these materials may come from a large variety of sources — political, ideological, economic, technological, literary, linguistic, etc. These rules may be in a variety of relations to one another — some may be overlapping or mutually reinforcing; others may be competing or hierarchical (cf. Hermans 1996:39–40). The empirical researcher may wish to diﬀerentiate between these rules of diﬀerent sources and levels and explore their inter-relations instead of grouping all of them under a blanket term. Who makes and governs these rules? It is “the institution in correlation with the market”, according to Even-Zohar (1997b:21). But are they the only factors? The rules, or norms, for text production, for example, may change (c) John Benjamins Delivered by Ingenta on: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 16:05:11 to: The John Rylands University Library, The University of Manchester IP: 130.88.65.237 320 Nam Fung Chang with advances in technology or the emergence of new forms of art. It is not sure whether all such changes can be related to the institution or the market through some tortuous path. Even if they can, the researcher may still appreci- ate a more detailed checklist (cf. Schäﬀner 1998:40) in order not to overlook some ‘minor’ factors. All polysystems share certain common features, of course, but each of them has unique features too, in terms of both intra- and inter-relations. Some may be more autonomous, others more heteronomous, and they may interact with diﬀerent polysystems in diﬀerent ways. Therefore, a special checklist may need to be devised for each case study according to the nature of a given polysystem. Another problem that researchers of the external politics of translationmay ﬁnd in Even-Zohar’s Polysystem theory is that it regards culture, society, etc., as “sign-governed human patterns of communication” (Even-Zohar 1990:9). In my opinion, it is this semiotic origin of his theory that has determined its “emphasis on models and repertoires” rather than on “actual political and social power relations or more concrete entities such as institutions or groups” (Hermans 1999:118). The justiﬁcation for a semiotic approach to the study of culture is that culture, or even reality, is manifested in signs. This is beyond dispute, but signs are just the surface manifestations of reality, and so the question is whether the study of signs should or can lead to a knowledge of reality itself, that is, what is concealed behind the signs, what is really at stake from a socio-cultural point of view. Just as linguistics, even socio-linguistics, is not able to go all the way towards the discovery of socio-cultural factors of translation (Venuti 2000:109–110), socio-semiotics cannot but fall short of the purpose of translation scholars who are interested in the ‘real thing’, who see society, culture, translation, etc., as power-governed human patterns of organizations or activities. 2. An augmented version of Polysystem theory in action In the belief that the cultural turn in Translation Studies need not have been accompanied by a movement away from Polysystem theory as the latter has laid the theoretical groundwork for the investigation of the ‘external politics’ of translation, I have ventured in another article (Chang 2000) to oﬀer an aug- mented version of Polysystem theory, which I tentatively call a ‘Macro-poly- system hypothesis’. It goes in a direction opposite to that of Even-Zohar’s (c) John Benjamins Delivered by Ingenta on: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 16:05:11 to: The John Rylands University Library, The University of Manchester IP: 130.88.65.237 Polysystem theory 321 revised outline in the sense that there is an increase rather than a decrease in the intricacy of classiﬁcations. It cannot be overemphasized that this version is not mutually exclusive with Even-Zohar’s revised outline. It is meant to complement the latter, designed specially to provide a checklist for the study of translation in its cultural context. ‘Macro-polysystem’ refers to what Even-Zohar calls “the overall polysystem of culture” (1990:93). I propose that the activities and products of translators, especially those of literary texts, are governed mainly, but not exclusively, by norms originating from six polysystems or certain sub-systems thereof: 1. The political polysystem, which is made up of institutions of power and marginalized groups; 2. The ideological polysystem, which consists of competing and conﬂicting ideologies of all sorts that exist in a given culture, sponsored by diﬀerent groups; 3. The economic polysystem, whose norms would bind translation activities to certain ‘economic principles’; 4. The linguistic polysystem, which would require conformity to the norms of a language variety; 5. The literary polysystem, which oﬀers certain “recognized” literary models (see Toury 1995:171) for translations to emulate; and 6. The translational polysystem, whose norms may be partially reﬂected in certain classroom exercises where the texts to be translated are not posited to serve any real purpose, and students are instructed just to translate, as if in a cultural vacuum. It can be seen that norms originating from the translational polysystem often conﬂict with the other types of norms. These diﬀerent types of norms pull the translator in diﬀerent directions, and reach an equilibrium with the resistance of the translator, if any. This equilibrium becomes “the overall ‘normative model’ a translation event is subject to”. These norms of diﬀerent origins are of course highly hypothetical con- structs. When they manifest themselves, they are already aﬀected by consider- ations of other polysystems. In the following paragraphs I would like to dwell brieﬂy on a Chinese version of David Lodge’s Small world published in the People’s Republic of China to illustrate the application of this augmented Polysystem hypothesis. In choosing this work for translation, the producers are embracing an ideology that is oﬀensive to the central system in China’s ideological polysystem (c) John Benjamins Delivered by Ingenta on: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 16:05:11 to: The John Rylands University Library, The University of Manchester IP: 130.88.65.237 322 Nam Fung Chang mainly because of the descriptions of sex in the work. The publisher is certainly aware of the ideological problems involved: a synopsis on a ﬂyleaf asserts that “readers with a little bit of culture will be able to see its true value andmeaning” instead of “mistaking” it for a pornographic work.2 Economic considerations may also have played a part, because 7,000 copies were printed in the second edition of 1996, only four years after 10,500 copies had been printed in the ﬁrst, and therefore a modest proﬁt must have been made.3 What is most interesting is the following paragraph in the “Publisher’s Notes” attached at the end of the book: The work contains a lot of arguments about academic theory and literary criticism, and some descriptions of sex. These descriptions of sex cannot be deleted because their use is inseparable from the author’s exposition of his views on literary theory. In spite of this statement, one can ﬁnd that although some descriptions of sex do remain, over twenty passages at least have been deleted or diluted (32, 59, 88, 89, 98, 105, 106, 107, 111, 154, 158, 181–182, 190, 256, 364, 366). Some of these passages are about literary theory, such as the following one, which is from Professor Morris Zapp’s conference paper “Textuality as striptease”: When we have seen the girl’s underwear we want to see her body, when we have seen her breasts we want to see her buttocks, and when we have seen her buttocks we want to see her pubis, and when we see her pubis, the dance ends — but is our curiosity and desire satisﬁed? Of course not. The vagina remains hidden within the girl’s body, shaded by her pubic hair, and even if she were to spread her legs before us… it would still not satisfy the curiosity and desire set in motion by the stripping. (Lodge 1985:26–27. Emphasis added.) The translation is done quite faithfully until it reaches the italic part, which is summarized as: Danshi, jishi rang women zai wang geng yinmi chu kan (32) [However, even if we were allowed to look at the more hidden place] Deletions are occasionally marked by ellipsis dots (e.g., 107, 190) or by notes in brackets such as “some slight deletions here and below” (181), but most of the time there is no indication of any kind. A few ‘mistranslations’ appear to have been intentional. For example, the following two questions that Fulvia Morgana asks Morris Zapp are turned into something so completely diﬀerent that they must have been the result of a conscious strategy: (c) John Benjamins Delivered by Ingenta on: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 16:05:11 to: The John Rylands University Library, The University of Manchester IP: 130.88.65.237 Polysystem theory 323 “Is it really twenty-ﬁve centimetres?” (134) “Ni de xingyu zhende feichang qiang ma?” (154) [Is your sexual desire really very strong?] “Didn’t you make your wife measure it with her tape measure?” (135) “Ni meiyou baonüe guo ni de qizi ma?” (154) [“Have you never violated your wife?”] In China, explicit descriptions of sex in translations and original works are likely to incur severe punishment after publication, and therefore the producers cannot go too far even if they wish to challenge the dominant ideology. Then why does the publisher claim that no deletions have been made? An informed person who asked to be kept anonymous told me that “it is more or less an ‘art’ an advertising art [sic]”, and that “they want to attract more readers for the obvious reason”. In other words, the “Publisher’s Notes” reﬂect the rising power of the economic norms of proﬁt-making since the mid-1980s and the declining inﬂuence of ethical norms in the commercial, professional, govern- mental and interpersonal spheres, which are determined by the new ideology that “to get rich is glorious”. Who has been responsible for the expurgations and alterations? According to my informant, it is mainly the editor. It is common knowledge in China that editors usually assume the duty of revising translated texts, sometimes without checking the source text, and sometimes without the prior consent or even knowledge of the translator, depending on the power relations between the two parties. A translator in China told me: “I myself am always sorry and angry when I know some of the passages and sentences are deleted or distorted. I can do nothing about it but complaining [sic]”. This is to say that the editor, acting on behalf of the central systems, sees to it that dominant norms are observed or at least not seriously violated, and the translator usually assumes a peripheral position in the power structure where the business of publishing is concerned, even if the translator enjoys a higher academic and social status than the editor. Even unintentional translation errors may sometimes reﬂect the inﬂuence of ideological norms. For example, the double meaning in the passage “[a]n- other, smaller advertisement urging the passer-by to “‘Have a Fling with Faggots Tonight’ is not … a manifesto issued by Rummidge Gay Liberation” (97; original emphasis) is lost on the translator. A footnote in the translation says that ‘ﬂing’ is a lively and unconstrained dance of the Scottish Highlands, and “Gay Liberation” is translated as “zongqing huanle” (giving up to pleasure) (109–110). The incomprehension must have been due to the fact that gay rights (c) John Benjamins Delivered by Ingenta on: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 16:05:11 to: The John Rylands University Library, The University of Manchester IP: 130.88.65.237 324 Nam Fung Chang are unimaginable to a person brought up in a culture where homosexuality is a taboo. Inmacro-polysystemic terms, this particular translation of “Gay Libera- tion” is caused by a general oblivion of a homosexual system in the gender polysystem, which is again determined by the dominant ideology. When no ideological considerations are involved, the translator tends to adhere to the words and sentence structures of the source text, resulting in a translation that is often grammatical but not idiomatic, as can be seen in the following passage: “Will you marry me, Angelica?” “Of course not!” she exclaimed, snatching her hand away and laughing incredulously. “Why not?” “Well, for a hundred reasons. I’ve only just met you, and I don’t want to get married anyway.” “Never?” “I don’t say never, but ﬁrst I want a career of my own, and that means I must be free to go anywhere.” (39) “Ni yuanyi jia gei woma? Anjilika?” “Dangran bu!” Ta mengdi chouchu ziji de shou jiaodao, bing yihuo di dui ta xiao zhe. “Wei shenme bu?” “N, you y

                    本文档为【Polysystem theory Its prospect as__ a framework for translation research】，请使用软件OFFICE或WPS软件打开。作品中的文字与图均可以修改和编辑，
                    图片更改请在作品中右键图片并更换，文字修改请直接点击文字进行修改，也可以新增和删除文档中的内容。 
 该文档来自用户分享，如有侵权行为请发邮件ishare@vip.sina.com联系网站客服，我们会及时删除。

                    [版权声明] 本站所有资料为用户分享产生，若发现您的权利被侵害，请联系客服邮件isharekefu@iask.cn，我们尽快处理。

                    本作品所展示的图片、画像、字体、音乐的版权可能需版权方额外授权，请谨慎使用。

                    网站提供的党政主题相关内容(国旗、国徽、党徽..)目的在于配合国家政策宣传，仅限个人学习分享使用，禁止用于任何广告和商用目的。
                

下载需要：免费已有0 人下载

立即下载

Polysystem theory Its prospect as__ a framework for translation research

你可能还喜欢