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Translation and the Construction of Identity: Abstracts
Date: 12-14 August 2004
Venue: Sookmyung Women's University, Seoul, Korea
Mirella Agorni Università degli Studi di Bologna, Italy An increasing number of approaches to translation
have been developed in recent years. As a consequence, the traditionally
sharp distinction between linguistic- and literary-oriented translation
studies is both dated and simplistic. The keyword of the late 1990s was
plurality - of theoretical approaches, methodologies, aids and tools.
Panel 1: Disciplinary Identity: Redefining Translation in the
21st Century
Plurality and Localism in Translation Studies
In this paper I ask whether plurality is to be perceived as a sign of
development or of impending crisis in an area like translation studies,
which has just recently begun to define its own frameworks and models. Is it
still possible to speak of translation theory - or theories? Does the
apparent fragmentation of approaches leave no space for anything but
contingent speculation, strictly dependent on the material conditions in
which translation takes place?
A concept of translation theory as integrated, rather than fragmented, could
be the answer to our quest for unity, provided that such integration results
in new, creative thinking. Several recent publications offer case studies in
which methodological tools taken from diverse areas of translation studies
are fruitfully integrated. One example is my own work on eighteenth-century
women translators and travel writers, which explores the role of “localism”
in historical research on translation (a concept introduced by Maria
Tymoczko).
A focus on the local, aimed at mapping the details of the cultural,
linguistic and historical contexts of translation-like phenomena, provides
descriptive studies with a ‘thick’, materialist specificity that enables
them to move inductively from the particular into the (theoretical) general.
Localism stands in a metonymical relation to theory: a limited image of
translation and its functioning under specific circumstances is evocative of
the greater whole. Hence, descriptive studies of translation become
exemplary for the theory of translation as a whole, providing new insights
and stimulating new theoretical thought.
© IATIS 2003