Redefining Translation Theory

In her “Reconceptualizing Translation Theory” Maria Tymoczko takes a self-reflexive look at the current position of translation theory, mainly regarding such concerns as the established subject/object positions, definitions and categorizations. Taking a brief look at the article, one could easily say that it summarizes the criticisms of post-colonial and post-structuralist works on translation; in that, the alternatives offered have mostly been mentioned by other scholars criticising the anachronistic and Eurocentric position of current translation theory.

As also stated by Theo Hermans, translation doesn’t provide people with a meta-language through which two stable lingual systems are bridged. Post-colonial works introducing the scene such concepts as border-cultures and hybridity proposes translation a position ‘within’ those systems, as a component rather than as an outsider/mediator. Inevitably, a new area of research arises, stipulating the translation theory redefine, reposit and represent itself, as a result of which, translation history will be rewritten. Embracing cultural relativity, historicity, pluralingualism in real terms, this new history would definitely be ‘thicker’ than the present one. This affluence primarily comes from appreciating each culture’s own manners of conceptualization. Cemal Demircioğlu’s research aiming to construct a geneology of translation in Turkish history is an exemplary effort, for instance. As also exemplified by Hermans and Tymoczko in their articles, not necessarily titled as ‘translation’, all practices concerning crosscultural representation and interference are the concerns of translational research, expanding the borderlines of the field’s current area. Surely, the extended borders would also require redefining the subject and object positions acknowledged within the field. As mentioned above, translational research has passed beyond taking two texts of some sort of equivalence relationship as its subject. Similarly, as Tymoczko also questions, the profile of the translator is subjected to a shift, in that, these new ‘thick’ studies are expected to adopt translation not as a meta-practice or a profession but as a daily practice highly involved in cultural development. Henceforth, it’s not only the translators as educated experts, but also the men on street or a child at home that are to be subjected to translational research.

Appreciating the particular, paying an effort to search for its own means of comprehending, practicing and producing phenomena surely is for the benefit of translational research. In this way, not only its position (among other research) and the accuracy of its products are enhanced, but also its contributions to reserch in other fields increase. However, ‘representing’ the particular is a problem of its own. As stated by Şebnem Susam Sarajeva, the focus on the particular- she calls it ‘peripheral’ in her article- has so far been proposed to the corpus via using the terms of the general- here,she uses the term ‘central’. This implies the existence of an hegemony within the field, in which the general (or universal one could call it) assimilates the particular. Through most research, the particular is translated into general, through the process of which its particularity becomes a mere ‘object’ of a ‘test out’. This is how the research is accepted; this is how it is realized among other research. Surely, such critical perspective towards the interdependencies between central-peripheral or general-particular is the far end of the line; still, it’s being too pessimistic doesn’t disprove the rightful point it touches on, that is avoiding ethnocentrism. It’s obvious that, there’s a necessity of representing the particular from its own standpoint. Thick translation, none-translation, meta-translation are all exemplary proposals for a solution to the most accurate representation. And hopefully, as evolved, translation theory will find more of them.