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Overview
This book addresses translation and interpreting with Arabic either as a source or target language. It focuses on new fields of study and professional practice, such as community translation and interpreting, and offers fresh insights into the relationship between culture, translation and interpreting. Chapters discuss issues relating specifically to Arabic and the Arab cultural context and contribute views, research findings and applications that come from a language combination and a cultural background quite different from traditional Eurocentric theoretical and professional positions. This volume is a significant addition to resources on Arabic translation and interpreting and contributes fresh perspectives to translation studies in general. It is of interest to students, researchers and professionals working in public service, community, legal, administrative and healthcare translation and interpreting, as well as intercultural communication and translator education.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783095261 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Multilingual Matters Ltd. |
| Publication date: | 04/14/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 205 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Mustapha Taibi is Associate Professor and Director of Academic Program, Languages, TESOL, Interpreting and Translation at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. He has worked as a practitioner for over 20 years and has taught linguistics, translation and interpreting for the last 15. His research interests include community translation and interpreting and he is Editor of Translation and Interpreting.
Mustapha Taibi is Associate Professor in Interpreting and Translation at Western Sydney University, Australia. He is the leader of the International Community Translation Research Group and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Translation & Interpreting. Among his recent books is New Insights into Arabic Translation and Interpreting (2016, Multilingual Matters).
Read an Excerpt
New Insights into Arabic Translation and Interpreting
By Mustapha Taibi
Multilingual Matters
Copyright © 2016 Mustapha Taibi and the authors of individual chaptersAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78309-526-1
CHAPTER 1
Through the Master Discourse of Translation
Said Faiq
Translation does not exist; it becomes. This becoming is realized through a complex process that should be explored in a cross-cultural site of interaction. Currently, globalization is the term used to refer to this site where intercultural communication through translation-becoming takes place. Here, information is communicated as translation that forms or further consolidates an existing body of knowledge of the translating culture about the translated one.
Cronin, 2013
1. Introduction
Axiomatically, globalisation invokes the existence of something else that is not so globalised – something local. It is a truism to say that different cultures have historically represented each other in ways that have reflected the type of existing power relationships between them. Nonetheless, since the 1990s postcolonial and translation studies in particular have contributed a great deal to illuminating issues of the formation of cultural identities and/or representation of foreign cultures; in 1999, (the late) André Lefevere named this process 'composing the other'. The conceptualization of translation involves a binarism based on conflict, as Salama-Carr puts it:
From within the discipline itself, the traditional issue of mediation linked with the increased visibility of the translator and the interpreter as agents, a shift of perspective promoted in great part by the so-called 'cultural turn' in translation and interpreting studies, followed and complemented by a 'sociological' engagement has paved the way for the growing interest in the role and responsibilities of translators and interpreters in relating and formulating conflict, and in issues of trust and testimony that often arise in that context of shifting power differentials. (2013: 32)
Negative representations of 'weak' cultures by 'powerful' ones – the latter mostly assumed to be Western – have been part of the scheme of history (the terms 'West' and 'Western' are used here to refer to intellectual framings rather than to geographical places). However, no culture has been misrepresented and deformed by the West like the Arab/Islamic one. Between these two antagonistic worlds, translation remains a prime medium of communication/interaction. Translation usually refers to the handling of written texts and spoken discourse is left to the realm of interpreting (i.e. oral translation). In addition, translation normally refers to both the process of translating and to the product, the target text. As such, the term covers a broad range of concepts and both denotes and connotes different meanings.
Within this context, the purpose of this chapter is to examine the constraints and pressures of the discourse through which translation is carried out. Particularly from perceived weaker cultures, translations are received by audiences at whose disposal is a master discourse that animates issues of identity, similarity and difference across cultures. Drawing on textual import from Arabic, the chapter shows how a culturally defined master discourse affects the act of translating at all levels.
2. The Master Discourse of Translation
Across the different approaches/models of translation, whether named or not, the primary objective is to achieve the same informational and emotive effects in the target translations that are contained in and by the source texts. Opposition and conflict between various approaches/models has been the norm in translation studies. According to Salama-Carr,
Much of the academic discourse on translation and interpreting has been articulated more or less explicitly in terms of conflict. Whilst some authors have focused on the tensions that are inherent in the process of translation (source texts versus target text, adequacy versus acceptability, literal translation versus free translation, semantic translation versus communicative translation, and formal correspondence versus dynamic equivalence, to name but a few dichotomies and constructed oppositions that underpin discussions of translation and classification of approaches and strategies), others have represented translation as an aggressive act. (2013: 31)
The given that is at the heart of the dichotomies listed above, the main theoretical basis has centred on the concept of equivalence. Therefore, actual equivalence in and through translation has been sought at both the content level and the expressive (form) level. This search has often led theorists and translators alike to focus on aspects of either form or content. But such polarization of what translation involves ignores two simple facts: any text produced through a given language is the product of a unique union between form and content (manner and matter), and the production and reception of a text are embedded in a specific cultural context. Seeing translation as an equivalence-seeking endeavor has further ignored that languages and their associated cultures are different and that complete equivalence, at one or multiple levels, is impossible. In the main and except for specific samples, texts cannot be accurately, faithfully, and neatly translated into other languages and still be the same as their originals. Linguistic difficulties (vocabulary, idioms, grammar, collocations, etc.) and cultural difficulties (perceptions, experiences, values, religions, histories, etc.) persist.
Since the 1980s, translation studies has been extended to consider various and challenging issues. In particular, the view of culture-modeling through translation has ushered in questions that cannot be adequately answered by the conventionalised notions of equivalence, accuracy, fidelity, or 'sourceer vs. targeteer' approaches to translation and translating. The focus has shifted from (un)translatability to the cultural, political, and economic ramifications of translation; away from concerns with translated texts towards treating translation as a combination of social, cultural, and political acts that occur within and are attached to global and local relations of power and dominance. Marinetti comments:
[C]ulturally-inflected studies have looked at translation as cultural interaction and have developed the question of translation ethics in the context of political censorship, endorsement of or resistance to colonial power and gender politics, generating a substantial body of literature that has developed these ideas into legitimate sub-areas. (2013: 29)
It follows then that translating involves the transporting (carrying-over) of languages and their associated cultures to specific target constituencies, and the recuperation of the former by the latter. Such constituencies have at their disposal established systems of representation which include norms and conventions for the production and consumption of meanings vis-à-vis people, objects, and events. These systems ultimately yield a master discourse through which identity and difference are marked and within which translating is carried out (Faiq, 2007). In this respect, Venuti (1996: 196) succinctly sums up the nature of translation, as a particular instance of writing, within the Anglo-American tradition:
The violence of translation resides in its very purpose and activity: the reconstitution of the foreign text in accordance with values, beliefs and representations that pre-exist it in the target language, always configured in hierarchies of dominance and marginality. (1996: 196)
Elsewhere, Venuti attempts to exorcise the ideological in the process of representation through translation. Using the terms 'domestication' and 'foreignization', he traces how, over the last three centuries, Anglo-American (by extension, Western) translation theory and practice have had normalising and neutralising effects. The ultimate aim of such effects has been to subdue the dynamics of texts and realities of indigenous societies and to represent them in terms of what is familiar and unchallenging to Western culture.
In intercultural communication, translation should perhaps most appropriately be seen and appreciated as involving interaction (communication) between and across different cultures through the languages of these cultures. This communication means that those carrying out the acts of translating bring with them prior knowledge (culture) learned through their own (usually mother or first) language. In any communicative act (even between people of the same group), culture and language are so intertwined that it is difficult to conceive of one without the other (Bassnett, 1998).
A culture seeks to instruct its members about what to expect from life; by doing so it reduces confusion and helps them predict the future, often on the basis of one or more pasts. Cultural theorists generally agree that the most basic elements of any culture are history, religion, values, social organization, and language itself. The first four are interrelated and animated and expressed through the fifth. Through its language, a culture is shared and learned behaviour is transmitted across generations for the purposes of promoting individual and group survival, growth, and development, as well as the demarcation of itself and its group vis-à-vis other cultures and their respective members.
A very basic definition of language is that it is no more than the combination of a good grammar book and a good dictionary. But this definition does not explicate what users actually do with grammar rules and neatly listed words; in reality, these mean what their users make of and want them to mean. So use depends very much on the user, and language as a whole assumes its importance as the mirror of the ways a culture perceives reality, identity, self, and others.
Because it brings culture and language together, translation requires transporting (in the literal sense, causing to travel) texts (comprised of languages and their associated cultures) so that they become other texts (that reside in other languages and their associated cultures). The culture of the others (the 'destination' culture) usually has an established system of representation that helps define it to its members but, more importantly, helps them to define the languages and cultures they are translating from vis-à-vis their own.
Thus, translation is by necessity a cultural act (Lefevere, 1998). As such, translation has a culture (politics, ideology, poetics) that precedes the actual act of translation. Culture A views culture B in particular ways, and vice versa; in turn, these particular ways affect how Culture A translates from Culture B, and vice versa. To express this union between culture and language, perhaps one can say that translation means transporting texts from Culguage A into Culguage B, where 'culguage', the blend of culture and language, is intended to capture the intrinsic relationship between the two.
In translation, the norms of producing, interpreting, and circulating texts in one culguage tend to remain in force when approaching texts transplanted through translation from another culguage. As with native texts, the reception process of translated ones is determined more by the shared knowledge of the translating community than by what the translated texts themselves contain. This means that the culture of translation can be defined as affecting (guiding and determining) the translation of culture. On translation as intercultural communication, Bassnett and Trivedi write:
... translation does not happen in a vacuum, but in a continuum; it is not an isolated act, it is part of an ongoing process of intercultural transfer. Moreover, translation is a highly manipulative activity that involves all kinds of stages in the process of transfer across linguistic and cultural boundaries. Translation is not an innocent, transparent activity but is highly charged with signification at every stage; it rarely, if ever, involves a relationship of equality between texts, authors or systems. (1999: 2)
The representation of (mainly external) others through translation is a powerful strategy of exclusion used by a particular culguage as normal, and even moral (Said, 1995; Venuti, 1998). This exclusion is accompanied by an inclusion process of some accepted members from the other culguage (foreigners) as long as they adopt and adapt to the norms of the culguage that is accepting them. The examples of some Maghrebi writers in French and some Indian and Arab writers in English are cases in point (Faiq, 2007, 2014). Calling for an enlargement of translation to empower translators, Tymoczko writes:
When translators remain oblivious of the Eurocentric pretheoretical assumptions built into the discipline of Translation Studies, they not only play out hegemonic roles in their works, they willingly limit their own agency as translators ... [Otherwise, t]ranslation in the age of globalization will become an instrument of domination, oppression, and exploitation. (2007: 8)
Approached from this perspective, translation yields sites for examining a plethora of issues: race, gender, (post)colonialism, publishing policies, censorship, and otherness. In terms of each of these issues, all parties involved in the translation enterprise (from choosing source texts for translation to linguistic decisions about the target) tend to be highly influenced by their own culguage and the way it sees the culguage they are translating from.
3. Translation from Arabic
Almost a decade before the events of 9/11/2001, Benjamin Barber posited two futures for the human race. One future is dictated by the forces of globalisation through
... the onrush of economic and ecological forces that demand integration and uniformity and that mesmerize the world with fast music, fast computers, and fast food – with MTV, Macintosh, and McDonald's pressing nations into one commercially homogeneous global network: one McWorld tied together by technology, ecology, communications and commerce. (1992: 53)
The other future is driven by what he calls 'tribalism' and is seen as the complete, extreme opposite of the former. This future represents
... a retribalization of large swaths of humankind by war and bloodshed: a threatened Lebanonization of national states in which culture is pitted against culture, people against people, tribe against tribe – a Jihad in the name of a hundred narrowly conceived faiths against every kind of interdependence, every kind of artificial social cooperation and civic mutuality. (1992: 53)
The choice here of the words 'Jihad' and 'tribe' to describe the dangerous future for humanity immediately conjures up images of Arabs and Islam as the main causes of destructive nationalisms (tribalisms) that threaten the ways of life of the 'civilised' West. This representation is not new, however; on the contrary, it preceded the spread of colonialism into Arab/Islamic lands. Colonialism furthered this view and augmented it with elites chosen from the 'natives' to act as apologists and/or guardians of its order and system of representation, both during and after colonial rule.
Translation from Arabic into Western culguages, mostly English and French, has followed representational strategies within an established framework of institutions that has its own lexis and norms (Faiq, 2004; Said, 1993), as outlined by Barber (1992) and discussed above. In a global context, translation, aided by the media and its technologies, yields 'enormous power in constructing representations of foreign cultures' (Venuti, 1998: 97). Given this situation, cultural encounters that involve Arabic language (and, by extension, all language and culture that relates to Islam) that are facilitated through translation into mainstream Western languages have been characterized by strategies of manipulation, subversion, and appropriation, with cultural conflicts being the ultimate outcome. Such strategies have become nastier and dangerously topoied (represented) since the events of September 2001. The media have played a major role in the rapid diffusion of subverted translations and coverage of this world – suffocating the diversity and heterogeneity of different Arab and Muslim cultures, portraying them instead as a monolith and a homogeneous group, and forming on their behalf a specific cultural identity that creates an otherness of absolute strangers who 'need to' be isolated, avoided, and even abominated. This pervasive practice negates possibilities of tertium comparationis and ethical translatability.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from New Insights into Arabic Translation and Interpreting by Mustapha Taibi. Copyright © 2016 Mustapha Taibi and the authors of individual chapters. Excerpted by permission of Multilingual Matters.
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Table of Contents
1. Stuart Campbell: Introduction
2. Said Faiq: Through the Master Discourse of Translation
3. Mustapha Taibi: Curriculum Innovation in the Arab World: Community Interpreting and Translation as an Example
4. Mustapha Taibi and Ahmad Qadi: Translating for Pilgrims in Saudi Arabia: A Matter of Quality
5. Mustapha Taibi and Mohamed El-Madkouri Maataoui: Interpreting Taboo: The Case of Arabic Interpreters in Spanish Public Services
6. Naima Ilhami and Catherine Way: Terminology in Undergraduate Translation and Interpreting Programmes in Spain: The Case of Arabic as a First Foreign Language
7. Mohammed Mediouni: Towards a Functional Approach to Arabic-English Legal Translation: The Role of Comparable / Parallel Texts
8. Sami Chatti: Translating Colour Metaphors: A Cognitive Perspective
9. Said Faiq: The Turn of Translating (into) Arabic