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Translation and the Construction of Identity: Abstracts
Date: 12-14 August 2004
Venue: Sookmyung Women's University, Seoul, Korea
Stanley G M Ridge
University of the Western Cape, South Africa
This study is concerned with ways in which South African translators and
interpreters theorise or fail to theorise their activity, with their
understanding of its social functions and significance, and so with the
innovative elements in a complex, fast-changing situation. Much depends on the
discourse resources available and current. In constitutionally multilingual
South Africa, prominent public notions about translation and interpreting both
influence practitioners and are influenced by them, creating more or less
realistic expectations of the profession. These notions are often, themselves,
versions of professional discourses, publicly accredited with academic
authority, and so both compelling and constraining. And there are the academic
debates. With this diverse equipment the theorizing begins.
Panel 2: The Politics of Interdisciplinary Research
Extracts from the Professional Commonplace Book of South African Translators and
Interpreters
I will use the trope of the Commonplace Book to suggest the relationship between
the commonplace and the possibility of reflection and innovation. The
Commonplace Book is a kind of writer’s notebook, the repository of striking
ideas and formulations encountered in reading or conversation, and of notes
towards new creative ventures. It is a paradox that the commonplace should
nurture the new. I wish to suggest the virtual Commonplace Book in the range of
ideas and formulations from various domains and disciplines that are current in
South African writing about translation and interpreting, and to explore some of
the main ways in which they are being used. This will involve analysing
discursive constraint or distraction as well as exploring new discursive
directions: the growing points of the professional discipline.
The material studied will be conference papers and publications by South
Africans concerned with translation and various public documents pertaining to
the topic.
© IATIS 2003