Translation as an Insider

It’s known that postmodern era brought with itself new perspectives towards the milestones of Enlightenment thought such as ‘self’, ‘unity’ and on top of all ‘reality’; and perhaps it’s the cultural theory that has been affected by this new conception of world/life the most. The ‘post-’s and ‘de-’s of this new world have obviously converted all representations, constructions, unitarisms and linearisms into misrepresentations, deconstructions, fragmentations and diversions which has lead cultural theory to radical redefinitions. As a socio-linguistic phenomenon, translation has found its position within this new scheme as a central one, quite ready to absorb the new conceptualizations interfering in its sphere.

Presumably, it’s the field of post-colonial studies that has embraced the shifts in cultural theory the most. Adopting the post-modern fragmentation and anti-absolutism as a weapon of decolonization, as also pointed by both Douglas Robinson and Kate Sturge, recent studies in the field impose the same type of oppression ‘the other’ has been exposed to, through making the ‘self’ question itself. In her “The other in Display”, Kate Sturge exemplifies these questionings motivated by decolonization through such offered strategies as ‘metamuseums’, ‘highlighted translatedness’, and ‘displays about displays’. And as all other postmodern binaries, these types of self-retrospections would result in encountering the other in the self. Apparently, borders aren’t as clear-cut as they used to be. Today both the colonized and the colonizer have realized that, throughout the colonization period, they’ve become a part of one another.

The interference of these concerns of post-colonial studies in translation has bestowed the field (actually both fields) with a gigantic object of study. The studies searching for the position of translation among such concepts introduced by post-colonial studies as ‘multiculturalism’, ‘border cultures’ and ‘hybridization’ find the position they’ve searched for right at the centre of the debates; and it is realized that just as ‘culture’, ‘translation’ itself is at the edge of a radical redefinition. As in the case of Sherry Simon’s ‘interlingual creation’, for instance, translation is proposed not as a ‘meta-text’ written over an original one, but a component of the original text, a motive behind the creativity it displays.

In his Translation and Empire, Robinson refers to the pessimistic discussions of post-colonialists about ‘cultural untranslatibility’ (i.e. Homi Bhabha). The article of Sherry Simon is quite enlightening right at this point. Thinking translation as a practice over the ‘hybrid’ (one may call this practice as ‘retranslation’ or ‘backtranslation’ of the ‘native/pure’), in other words, leaving it outside the boundaries of the subject (that is the original text) through regarding it as a meta/post-practice, might lead to unfruitful problematizations where the role of translation is seen as insufficient, therefore unnecessary. Whereas, providing a look from the inside, Simon, Mehrez and Rafael present translation as an active agent within the composition process of the hybrid. From these all, it could be concluded that the post-modern scheme offers translation two options: 1) staying within the boundaries of being a meta-text and ending up with an ‘insufficiency’ (actually this is not a defeat also since for post-moderns no existence is sufficient), 2) embracing the hybrid, finding a position within its composition.

Surely, adopting being the ‘insider’ would require translational research a new methodology, since this brings forth new questions, conceptual backgrounds and agencies with itself. In Sherry Simon’s exemplifications, for instance, translation doesn’t merely present a point of interaction between two cultural and lingual systems; instead, within the texts of Brault, Brossard and Gagnon, it’s firstly the clash of literature and translation that is problematized. Surely this would also concern the interaction between two cultures and languages since, as both Simon and Mehrez imply, such interlingual creation (and the clash of literature and translation) stands for the in-between positionings brought by the border-cultures. Apparently, from the post-colonial perspective, the effaced borders between translation/original and translator/author have gradually become the metonymies of the post-colonial representation of the hybrid who is in between the culture of the colonizer and the colonized. And as mentioned above, converting this perspective into a translational one would require new research concerning new questions and embracing new objects of analysis, as a consequence of which the ceaseless redefinitions of translation would proceed.

References
Robinson, Douglas
1997 Translation and Empire
Simon, Sherry
1999 "Translating and Interlingual Creation in the Contact Zone"
Sturge, Kate
2006 "The Other in Display"