Maria Tymoczko

Translation and Political Engagement

Abstract The possibility of using translation for geopolitical agenda and political engagement has stimulated substantial interest in the last decade within translation studies and in other disciplines. Defining engagement in translation studies as translation with an activist component, this article reviews the discourse pertaining to translation and engagement. The case study of the translation of Irish literature into English over the last century, from the epoch of Irish cultural nationalism through Irish political independence to the present, is used as an exemplar of a translation movement that has been effective in achieving significant geopolitical results. Desiderata for a theory of translation and engagement are discussed, in the context of which a criticism is offered of Venuti’s contribution to the discourse of translation and engagement. The article concludes with the identification of characteristics shared by translation movements that have effectively contributed to political engagement and geopolitical change.

Why Translators Should Want to Internationalize Translation Studies

Abstract The role of the translator and the conceptualization of translation are both in a period of notable change. Some of this change is happening because the profession of translation is internationalizing rapidly and thus old Eurocentric and other localized ideas no longer fully respond to the demands of the field. Globalization is also exercising transformative pressures on the practices of translation, in part driven by new technologies. Frameworks to interrogate the discourses of translation studies and to develop broader conceptualizations of translation so as to meet the challenges coming from both inside and outside the field are needed by scholars, by teachers of translation, and most of all, by translators themselves. Linking theory and pragmatics, this article explores how consideration of a broad field of ideas about translation from many parts of the world offers new models of practice, greater potential for creativity, enhancement of the translator’s agency, new ethical positioning, the ability to assess translational phenomena with greater acuity, and a reservoir of conceptualizations for meeting challenges of the present and the future.

Translation Studies Forum: Cultural translation

In the following, we present the second round of responses to the article ‘‘Cultural translation: An introduction to the problem’’, by Boris Buden and Stefan Nowotny of the European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies in Vienna (Translation Studies 2, no. 2 (2009): 196 208). The first round of responses has prompted reactions from a wide range of perspectives, and we will continue this stimulating discussion in Translation Studies 3, no. 3. We very much welcome further responses (deadline for submission: February 2010).

Translation, Ethics and Ideology in a Violent Globalizing World

The topic of political violence and globalization inevitably invokes the events of 11 September 2001 in the United States, bombings in the United Kingdom and Spain, suicide bombings throught the Middle East, the US presence in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the supercharged military response by Israel to what are at times relatively minor instances of political violence by Palestinian civilians. We could add to this dismal litany violence associated with the world drug trade, violence associated with prisons and the detention of prisoners worldwide, ethnic slaughter and genocide, and cruelty promulgated by specific regimes that use arbitary violence against civilian populations to inspire terror so as to buttress their power, all of which have gained global attention because of contemporary media and their translation activities. As I write these words, it is probably fair to say that most people in the world who know and care about these violent acts and events also disapprove of them. This includes the majority of voters in the United States who have grown increasingly opposed to the involvement of the US in what are seen as civil wars and to acts of the US government that violate the US Constitution, including domestic spying and the torture of prisoners, as the results of the 2008 elections indicate.1 It is, of course, important to acknowledge that those aware of these world events do not in fact constitute the majority of the world’s population, despite the rhetoric about globalization, because so few people actually have the resources — whether material or psychic — to ake an interest in world events and to access essential information.

Trajectories of research in translation studies: an update with a case study in the neuroscience of translation

The paper is a review of the major trajectories of research in translation studies during the decade 2005–2015 and an updated projection of research trajectories for the decade 2016–2025. It conclu...

Translation in the Crucible of Modernity

In coming to terms with the Modern Age, with modernity itself, a major task for all peoples has been to readjust their relationships to age-old lifeways, to traditions that have structured material and social life alike and that have defined them as nations, in the earliest sense of the word. Such lifeways and traditions are at the heart of culture—they are needed for identity, security, and stability; yet they must be modified or at times even abandoned for adaptability and change. Declan Kiberd views the Irish as one of the first peoples to experience the demands of the Modern Age— the rapidly changing conditions that brought alterations to virtually every sphere of life, that made people migrants in time as well as space—and he has called Ireland the “crucible of modernity” (1998). Seeing the Great Famine as the impetus that launched Ireland into modernity, Kiberd argues that the Irish responded vigorously to its challenges, showing themselves remarkably flexible and resilient, forward-looking rather than backward-looking, as illustrated, for example, by their willingness to give up the national language within a generation in the mid-nineteenth century. Half a century later Ireland was faced with yet another major task, the task of making the claim to be a nation in the political sense of the word, a claim that was at the time—and often still is today—predicated on the possession of a distinct culture. The Irish were enterprising in this task as well, reviving (and inventing when necessary) all aspects of Irish tradition that were useful for the definition of an Irish national culture, from games to language. The impulse is clearly apparent in the Irish literary revival, which Kiberd has called “essentially an exercise in translation” (1995: 624) and which David Lloyd has characterized in part as having a “‘translational’ aesthetic” (1993: 97).1