Mona Baker and Gabriela Saldanha (eds.

Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, 2nd ed.

London and New York: Routledge, 2009

KINGA KLAUDY
Explicitation pp. 104-109
Explicitation is the technique of making explicit in the target text information that
is implicit in the source text. Explicitation (and implicitation) STRATEGIES are
generally discussed together with addition (and omission) strategies (Vinay and
Darbelnet 1958/1965). Some scholars regard addition as the more generic and
explicitation as the more specific concept (Nida 1964), while others interpret
explicitation as the broader concept which incorporates the more specific notion
of addition (Séguinot 1988; Schjoldager 1995a). The two are handled as
synonyms by Englund Dimitrova (1993), who uses the terms ‘additionexplicitation’
and ‘omissionimplicitation’.
Explicitation has now developed into
a cover term which includes a number of obligatory and optional translational
operations (Klaudy 2001, 2003). Pápai (2004) distinguishes between
explicitation as a strategy used in the process of translation and explicitation as a
feature of the product of translation, the latter being manifested in a higher
degree of explicitness in translated than in nontranslated
texts in the same
language.
Defining explicitation
The concept of explicitation was first introduced by Vinay and Darbelnet, who
defined it as ‘a stylistic translation technique which consists of making explicit in
the target language what remains implicit in the source language because it is
apparent from either the context or the situation’ (1958/1995:342).
Implicitation, on the other hand, is defined as ‘a stylistic translation technique
which consists of making what is explicit in the source language implicit in the
Defining explicitation
The concept of explicitation was first introduced by Vinay and Darbelnet, who
defined it as ‘a stylistic translation technique which consists of making explicit in
the target language what remains implicit in the source language because it is
apparent from either the context or the situation’ (1958/1995:342).
Implicitation, on the other hand, is defined as ‘a stylistic translation technique
which consists of making what is explicit in the source language implicit in the
target language, relying on the context or the situation for conveying the
meaning’ (ibid.: 344). The results of explicitation and implicitation are often
discussed in terms of gains and losses: for example, because the Hungarian
pronoun system is not marked for gender, part of the meaning of the English
personal pronoun she is lost in translations into Hungarian.
The concepts of explicitation and implicitation were further elaborated by Nida
(1964), though he does not actually use the terms ‘explicitation’ and
‘implicitation’. Nida deals with the main techniques of adjustment used in the
process of translating, namely additions, subtractions and alterations. Additions
are divided into the following types (1964:227):
(a) filling out elliptical expressions
(b) obligatory specification
(c) additions required because of grammatical restructuring
(d) amplification from implicit to explicit status
(e) answers to rhetorical questions
(f) classifiers
(g) connectives
(h) categories of the receptor language which do not exist in the source language
(i) doublets
Amplification from implicit to explicit status (category (d) above) takes place
when ‘important semantic elements carried implicitly in the source language may
require explicit identification in the receptor language’ (ibid.: 228). Nida lists
several examples from the BIBLE to illustrate the range and variety of this type
of addition. For example, ‘“queen of the South” (Luke 11:31) can be very
misleading when neither “queen” nor “South” is familiar in the receptor
language… Accordingly in Tarascan one must say “woman who was ruling in
the south country’’’ (ibid.: 229).
Throughout the 1970s and the 1980s most publications on the subject of partial
translation theories, especially in the field of languagerestricted,
arearestricted
and culturerestricted
theories (Holmes 1972), followed Nida’s example:
explicitation and implicitation were seen as only two among a variety of methods
for addition

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and omission in translation. For example, Barkhudarov (1975:223) identifies

four types of transformations in translation: perestanovka (‘transposition’),
zamena (‘substitution’), dobavleniye (‘addition’) and opushcheniye
(‘omission’). He argues that the most important reason for additions in
translation from English into Russian is ellipsis in nominal structures in English,
that is, the omission of certain semantic components in English surface structure
which were present in the deep structure. Since ellipsis is not characteristic of
Russian, the omitted semantic components are reconstructed in the Russian
surface structure: pay claim thus becomes trebovaniye povisit zarplatu
(demand to raise the pay) and gun licence becomes udostovereniye na pravo
nosheniya oruzhiya (licence for right to carry weapon).
A very detailed typology of lexical and grammatical transformations, including
grammatical additions in Bulgarian–Russian and Russian–Bulgarian translation,
can be found in the work of the Bulgarian scholar Vaseva (1980). In Vaseva’s
view, additions are generated when ‘linguistic asymmetry’ necessitates explicit
expressions in the target language to encode meaning components that are
contained implicitly in the source language. She explains grammatical additions
with reference to socalled
‘missing categories’ and categories with different
functions: Bulgarian has articles, while Russian has none; the possessive pronoun
and the copula can be omitted in Russian, but not in Bulgarian; the direct object
can in certain rare cases be omitted in Russian, but never in Bulgarian. Besides
grammatical additions, Vaseva refers briefly to socalled
pragmatic additions,
which are introduced when concepts generally known by the source language
audience may be unfamiliar to the target language audience and therefore
require explanation in the translation.
The explicitation hypothesis
The socalled
explicitation hypothesis was formulated by BlumKulka
(1986) in what is considered by many to be the first systematic study of
explicitation. Drawing on concepts and descriptive terms developed within
discourse analysis, she explores discourselevel
explicitation, that is,
explicitation connected with SHIFTS of cohesion and coherence (overt and
covert textual markers) in translation. Shifts of cohesive markers can be
attributed partly to the different grammatical systems of languages. For instance,
in English–French translation gender specification may make the French text
more explicit than the English. Other shifts in the use of cohesive markers are
attributable to different stylistic preferences for certain types of cohesive
markers in different languages. For example, in English–Hebrew translation
preference for lexical repetition rather than pronominalization may make the
Hebrew text more explicit (1986:19). However, according to the explicitation
hypothesis, it is the translation process itself, rather than any specific differences
between particular languages, which bears the major part of the responsibility
for explicitation (ibid.):
The process of interpretation performed by the translator on the source text
might lead to a TL text, which is more redundant than SL text. This redundancy
can be expressed by a rise in the level of cohesive explicitness in the TL text.
This argument may be stated as ‘the explicitation hypothesis’, which postulates
an observed cohesive explicitness from SL to TL texts regardless of the
increase traceable to differences between the two linguistic and textual systems
involved. It follows that explicitation is viewed here as inherent in the process of
The process of interpretation performed by the translator on the source text
might lead to a TL text, which is more redundant than SL text. This redundancy
can be expressed by a rise in the level of cohesive explicitness in the TL text.
This argument may be stated as ‘the explicitation hypothesis’, which postulates
an observed cohesive explicitness from SL to TL texts regardless of the
increase traceable to differences between the two linguistic and textual systems
involved. It follows that explicitation is viewed here as inherent in the process of
translation.
According to Séguinot (1988:108), however, the definition is too narrow:
‘explicitness does not necessarily mean redundancy’. Séguinot also points out
that ‘the greater number of words in French translation, for example, can be
explained by welldocumented
differences in the stylistics of English and
French’ (ibid.). In her view, the term ‘explicitation’ should be reserved for
additions which cannot be explained by structural, stylistic or rhetorical
differences between the two languages, and addition is not the only device of
explicitation. Explicitation takes place not only when ‘something is expressed in
the translation, which was not in the original’ (ibid.), but also in cases where
‘something which was implied or understood through presupposition in the
source text is overtly expressed in the translation, or an element in the source

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text is given a greater importance in the translation through focus, emphasis, or

lexical choice’ (ibid.).
Séguinot examines translations from English into French and from French into
English, and in both cases she finds greater explicitness in translation, resulting
from improved topiccomment
links, the addition of linking words and the
raising of subordinate information into coordinate or principal structures (ibid.:
109). Her study suggests that the increase in explicitness in both cases can be
explained not by structural or stylistic differences between the two languages but
by the editing strategies of the revisers.
However, support for a version of the explicitation hypothesis may be found in
VehmasLehto’s
study (1989), which compares the frequency of connective
elements in Finnish journalistic texts translated from Russian with their frequency
in texts of the same genre, originally written in Finnish. She finds that the Finnish
translations are more explicit than the texts originally written in Finnish. It is
possible, therefore, that explicitation strategies inherent in the translation process
lead to translated texts in a given genre being more explicit than texts of that
genre originally composed in the same language.
Another application of the concept is to be found in Hewson and Martin’s study
of DRAMA translation, which suggests that implicitating/ explicitating techniques
shift ‘certain elements from the linguistic to the situational level and vice
versa’ (1991:104). In drama translation, in other words, ‘meaningful elements
are transferred from situation into the staging text (stage directions) or integrated
into character’s words’ (ibid.).
Types of explicitation
Obligatory explicitation
Obligatory explicitation is dictated by differences in the syntactic and semantic
structure of languages (Barkhudarov 1975; Vaseva 1980; Klaudy 1993, 2003;
Englund Dimitrova 1993). Syntactic and semantic explicitation is obligatory
because without it targetlanguage
sentences would be ungrammatical.
The most obvious cases of obligatory explicitation are triggered by the socalled
‘missing categories’. For example, there is no definite article in Russian.
Translation from Russian into English, which uses the definite article prolifically,
will thus involve numerous additions, as will translation from the prepositionfree
Hungarian into languages such as Russian and English, which use prepositions.
While syntactic explicitation generally entails an increase in the number of words
(tokens) in the target text, semantic explicitation consists of choosing more
specific words in the target text. Because of the different linguistic structuring of
reality in different languages, certain concepts such as body parts, colours and
kinship terms may have more detailed vocabularies in some languages than in
others. For example, the English terms ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ cannot be
translated into Hungarian without explicitation, because Hungarian has different
terms for ‘younger brother’ (öcs) and ‘younger sister’ (hug), and for ‘older
brother’ (báty) and ‘older sister’ (nővér).
Optional explicitation
reality in different languages, certain concepts such as body parts, colours and
kinship terms may have more detailed vocabularies in some languages than in
others. For example, the English terms ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ cannot be
translated into Hungarian without explicitation, because Hungarian has different
terms for ‘younger brother’ (öcs) and ‘younger sister’ (hug), and for ‘older
brother’ (báty) and ‘older sister’ (nővér).
Optional explicitation
Optional explicitation is dictated by differences in textbuilding
strategies (cf.
BlumKulka’s
cohesive patterns) and stylistic preferences between languages.
Such explicitations are optional in the sense that grammatically correct sentences
can be constructed without their application in the target language, although the
text as a whole will be clumsy and unnatural. Examples of optional explicitation
include sentence or clause initial addition of connective elements to strengthen
cohesive links, the use of relative clauses instead of long, left branching nominal
constructions, and the addition of emphasizers to clarify sentenceperspective,
among others (Doherty 1987; VehmasLehto
1989).
Pragmatic explicitation
Pragmatic explicitation of implicit cultural information is dictated by differences
between cultures: members of the targetlanguage
cultural community may not
share aspects of what is considered general knowledge within the source
language culture and, in such cases, translators often need to include
explanations in

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translations. For example, names of villages and rivers, or of items of food and
drink, which are well known to the source language community may mean
nothing to the targetlanguage
audience. In such cases, a translator might, for
instance, write ‘the river Maros’ for Maros, or ‘Lake Fertő’for Fertő.
Translationinherent
explicitation
Translationinherent
explicitation can be attributed to the nature of the
translation process itself. Séguinot draws a distinction between ‘choices that can
be accounted for in the language system, and choices that come about because
of the nature of the translation process’ (1988:18). The latter type of
explicitation is explained by one of the most pervasive, languageindependent
features of all translational activity, namely the necessity to formulate ideas in the
target language that were originally conceived in the source language (Klaudy
1993).
Corpora in explicitation research
As one of the potential UNIVERSALS of translation, research on explicitation
gained a new impetus in the 1990s, thanks to the introduction of electronic
CORPORA as research tools in translation studies. Corpusbased
studies
revealed new evidence of explicitation as a strategy of translation and of
explicitness as a characteristic feature of translated texts. Olohan and Baker
(2000), for instance, found that the optional connective was more common in a
corpus of translated English texts (the Translational English Corpus) than in a
corpus of nontranslated
texts in the same language (a subset of the British
National Corpus). Pápai (2004), using the ARRABONA corpus which consists
of English and Hungarian parallel texts and Hungarian–Hungarian comparable
texts, identified sixteen types of explicitation strategies (frequent use of
punctuation marks, filling in of elliptical structures, addition of conjunctions,
lexical explanation and addition of discourseorganizing
items, among others) in
English–Hungarian translation. The study also revealed a higher level of
explicitness in translated Hungarian texts than in nontranslated
Hungarian texts.
Explicitation vs. implicitation: the asymmetry hypothesis
Klaudy (2001) examined the relationship between explicitation and implicitation
in operations carried out by translators translating literary works from Hungarian
into English, German, French and Russian and vice versa. Obligatory
explicitation shifts are generally symmetrical, that is, explicitation in one direction
is matched by implicitation in the other. Optional explicitation in one direction
may also be in a symmetrical relationship with implicitation in the opposite
direction; however, due to its optional nature, this type of explicitation is not
always counterbalanced by optional implicitation in the opposite direction.
Klaudy (1996a) demonstrated that translators carrying out English–Hungarian
back translation do not omit elements added in Hungarian–English translation.
Quantitative analysis of semantic variability of reporting verbs in English–
Hungarian and Hungarian–English translations indicated that, while translators
tend to choose more specific reporting verbs in translation from English into
Hungarian (for example, ‘say’ would be replaced by the equivalent of ‘mutter’,
‘burst on’, ‘accuse’, etc.), they do not choose more general verbs in the
Hungarian into English direction (Klaudy and Károly 2005). These findings
seem to verify the asymmetry hypothesis postulated by Klaudy (2001),
according to which explicitation in the L1􀀀 L2 direction is not always
back translation do not omit elements added in Hungarian–English translation.
Quantitative analysis of semantic variability of reporting verbs in English–
Hungarian and Hungarian–English translations indicated that, while translators
tend to choose more specific reporting verbs in translation from English into
Hungarian (for example, ‘say’ would be replaced by the equivalent of ‘mutter’,
‘burst on’, ‘accuse’, etc.), they do not choose more general verbs in the
Hungarian into English direction (Klaudy and Károly 2005). These findings
seem to verify the asymmetry hypothesis postulated by Klaudy (2001),
according to which explicitation in the L1􀀀 L2 direction is not always
counterbalanced by implicitation in the L2􀀀 L1 direction because translators –
where they have a choice – prefer to use operations involving explicitation, and
often refrain from introducing optional implicitation. Should this hypothesis be
verified, it would underpin the assumption that explicitation is a universal
strategy of translation, independent of languagepair
and direction of translation.
New developments in explicitation research
Research on explicitation as a strategy and explicitness as a supposed universal
of translated texts has become a testing ground for new experimental methods in
translation studies, such as

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THINKALOUD
PROTOCOLS and keystroke logging (Englund Dimitrova
2005), and has benefited from new theoretical approaches (House 2004a; Pym
2005a; Heltai 2005). Englund Dimitrova (2005) investigated the translation
process using the language pair Russian–Swedish, focusing on the explicitation
of implicit logical links. The data analysed show that certain types of
explicitation appear to function as translation NORMS and are adopted by
professional translators as part of a highly automatized decisionmaking
process, while others occur as the result of intralingual paraphrasing in the target
language, as part of the translator’s revision of the target text.
Pym (2005a) attempts to model explicitation within a risk management
framework, arguing that ‘since translation involves communication into a context
with a fewer shared references, it involves greater risks than nontranslation,
which does not consistently have this feature. And where there are greater risks,
there are greater opportunities for risk minimization’ (ibid.: 41). Heltai (2005)
raises the question of the relationship between explicitness and processability: if
translations are more explicit than nontranslations
why is it often more difficult
to read translations? Explicitation may increase redundancy, but increased
redundancy does not always help processing. Heltai offers a detailed
description of the effect of redundancy and ellipsis on the readability of
translated texts.
It is especially revealing to investigate the occurrence of explicitation in modes
of language mediation where time and space constraints might preclude it. In this
respect, studies conducted so far suggest that explicitation is indeed a feature of
interpreting (Shlesinger 1995; Ishikawa 1999; Gumul 2006) and subtitling
(Perego 2003).
See also:
CORPORA; EQUIVALENCE; LINGUISTIC APPROACHES; NORMS;
SHIFTS; UNIVERSALS.
Further reading
Vinay and Darbelnet 1958/1995; Séguinot 1985; BlumKulka
1986; Doherty
1987; Séguinot 1988; VehmasLehto
1989; Baker 1993; Englund Dimitrova
1993; Baker 1996a; Puurtinen 2001; Klaudy 2003; House 2004a; Pápai 2004;
Englund Dimitrova 2005; Heltai 2005; Klaudy and Károly 2005; Pym 2005a.
Page 109
F
Fictional representations
With translation (including interpreting) being ubiquitous in the real world, it is
not surprising that it has emerged as a theme or plot device in fiction. Even in its
most imaginative and fantastic shapes, fiction always has a mimetic dimension in
the broad sense of referring back somehow to our understanding of reality and
commenting on it.
There are several other basic conventions of the narrative genre that would
seem to invite the ‘emplotment’ of MULTILINGUALISM and translation.
Most narratological models recognize the importance of conflict as the driving
force of plots. Conflicting wants and needs may develop within the same
linguistic community, but in stories describing cosmopolitan fictional realities
(e.g. borderlands, modern cities, international diplomacy, espionage) or stories
involving shifts along the spatial axis (e.g. travel, exploration, conquest,
migration) they may well find expression on the linguistic plane. In that case,
translation may play a part in the conflict’s resolution, or the absence or
mismanagement of interlinguistic mediation may become an obstacle to its
solution. Independently of all the symbolic and sociocultural values that
translation may acquire, the figure of the translator can in this way be central to
the ‘mechanics’ of the plot as protagonist, antagonist or helper, possibly in
various roles (the translatorashelper
may become the protagonist, or turn
enemy, etc.).
Since, in a more rhetorical perspective, the art of narrative largely depends on
the manipulation of the reader’s knowledge and curiosity, translation can be
employed for the sake of mystery and suspensemanagement
too. From
Sherlock Holmes’s adventure with ‘The Greek Interpreter’ (1893) to Dan
Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (2003), one finds countless examples of fiction
where translation serves to encode and then, at the appropriate moment, to
unlock a crucial piece of information, such as a prophecy or a secret message.
Rhetorical effects of a very different nature may be found in COMIC texts
where interlingual misunderstandings and mistranslations are mobilized for
humorous purposes.
Despite all these and other possibilities, in many cases fictional texts will fail to
reflect the multilingualism which is known or can be assumed to exist in the
fictional world. The possibilities that exist in this respect have been summarized
by Sternberg (1981) as follows:
♦ vehicular matching means the allotment of different languages or language
varieties to characters and groups of characters in accordance with our
knowledge of the historical reality represented;
♦ the homogenizing convention is operative when a monolingual text
describes what we know or believe to be a multilingual reality; the credibility
gap that such a nonmimetic
policy may entail is mostly taken care of by the
viewer’s or reader’s ‘willing suspension of disbelief’;
♦ referential restriction applies to texts which are monolingual because the
social milieu of the fictional world is monolingual;
knowledge of the historical reality represented;
♦ the homogenizing convention is operative when a monolingual text
describes what we know or believe to be a multilingual reality; the credibility
gap that such a nonmimetic
policy may entail is mostly taken care of by the
viewer’s or reader’s ‘willing suspension of disbelief’;
♦ referential restriction applies to texts which are monolingual because the
social milieu of the fictional world is monolingual;
♦ in the much rarer case of vehicular promiscuity, multilingual textual means
are used to express monolingual realities, as in Joyce’s Finnegans Wake
(1939).
It is mainly in fictional texts that show vehicular matching where one expects
translation to become an issue.
A more finegrained
analysis could describe the exact degrees and types of
codemixing
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and codeswitching
as well as the quotation techniques that may be employed in
textual representations of MULTILINGUALISM and translation. Moreover,
the data always need to be interpreted in terms of why the fictional text renders
(or significantly fails to render) assumed multilingualism or translation in a certain
way. The linguistic skills of authors and of their entourage and intended audience
are to be regarded as enabling conditions rather than as ultimate explanations. In
many cases, the orchestration of different languages and language varieties in a
text implies some kind of comment on linguistic hierarchies in the real world (see
MINORITY). Thus, the way in which Shakespeare in a play such as Henry V
exploits the differences and stages problematic passages between English,
French, broken English, broken French, English spoken with Irish, Scottish and
Welsh accents, with a sprinkling of other languages added for good measure, is
partly a mimetic reflection of historical realities but partly also an ideological
projection which reconfigures these realities to show a confident Britain on the
way to unity under firm English guidance and with superiority over its overseas
rivals.
In discussing matters of translation and fictional representations alike, we are
well advised to use an open and flexible concept of ‘language’ which
accommodates not only the ‘official’ taxonomy of languages but also the whole
range of subtypes and varieties existing within the various officially recognized
languages (e.g. dialect, sociolect, slang) and indeed sometimes challenging our
neat linguistic typologies (e.g. Spanglish, artificial languages). Institutionalized
power relationships which have taken the form of habit and convenience
continue to prop up the conventional distinction between ‘languages’ and
‘language varieties’ or ‘dialects’, but the dividing line is historical and
problematic. What matters in each instance is the hierarchical patterns according
to which the textual space is divided between the different idioms (e.g. narrative
vs. character voices, main text vs. paratexts, translation or not) and the question
of their function and effect.
Gods, aliens, colonizers, subjects
In fiction as in real life, the translator’s power can be assessed in terms of two
variables: the intrinsic importance of the message, and the distance between the
two cultures which enter into communication via the translator.
Divine messages (e.g. sacred books) provide an extreme example of the
translator’s power. What messages could have a more profound significance
than those coming from an omnipotent God, and what could be more radically
different than the spheres of divine perfection and those of human error?
Different religions and faiths seem to have incorporated an awareness of this
into their belief systems by developing mythical accounts of how God’s divine
message was translated and/or multiplied in languages that humans can
understand, with divine inspiration guiding the human and thus fallible translators
so as to guarantee the EQUIVALENCE, sacrality and orthodoxy of their work
(see BIBLE, JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN). Such accounts of the origin of
sacred texts and their translations constitute a fascinating body of myths
involving translation, but not without reminding us of the blurred line between
‘fact’ and ‘fiction’. Whereas sceptics and agnostics will see stories about
divinely inspired translation as fictional projections, more orthodox believers will
believe them to be literally true. Such issues of fictionality and truth also arise,
albeit with a totally different range of implications, in stories in which the account
so as to guarantee the EQUIVALENCE, sacrality and orthodoxy of their work
(see BIBLE, JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN). Such accounts of the origin of
sacred texts and their translations constitute a fascinating body of myths
involving translation, but not without reminding us of the blurred line between
‘fact’ and ‘fiction’. Whereas sceptics and agnostics will see stories about
divinely inspired translation as fictional projections, more orthodox believers will
believe them to be literally true. Such issues of fictionality and truth also arise,
albeit with a totally different range of implications, in stories in which the account
of translation has an (auto) biographical or historical dimension (e.g. Antjie
Krog’s Country of My Skull, 1998).
One level below the sacred/human interface we find another body of narratives
in which translators may have crucial responsibilities, namely in the realm of
science fiction, where storylines often include communicative problems on an
interplanetary or even intergalactic scale. Here too, the intrinsic importance of
the messages is huge inasmuch as the very survival of a race, planet or galaxy
may be at stake, with mindboggling
linguistic and cultural distances to be
bridged by the translator. But translation appears to be less of a central theme in
science fiction than one would perhaps have expected; the translation problem
is usually ‘either passed over in silence or dispensed with
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in one of three ways that reflect received ideas: telepathy, lingua franca and
machine translation’ (Mossop 1996:2). Technology or pseudoscience can
thereby take the place of divine inspiration as the fictional sleight of hand helping
translators to bridge the unbridgeable. The socalled
Babelfish in Douglas
Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy from 1979 (an earplug with
inbuilt translation facility that renders any message heard into the hearer’s
language) is essentially the acoustic equivalent of the transparent stones through
which Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon Church in 1830, had to read the
Book of Mormon in order to have the divine message visually revealed to him
in his native English.
Coming down one more step to reach a level where stories about translation
start referring to chronicled human history in a more tangible manner, we find
ourselves dealing with stories which describe – and fictionalize – the encounters
and struggles between continents and peoples. Many of these writings can be
subsumed under the labels of colonial and postcolonial writing (see
POSTCOLONIAL APPROACHES). They are typically stories in which
explorers and settlers in the crucial first stages of the colonization process, or
administrators in the later stages of imperial government, depend on the services
of local translators. In these stories translators may have crucial control over
flows of information which determine the fate of entire communities, possibly
continents, and they have to negotiate oceanwide
linguistic and cultural gaps,
aggravated by the opposed interests of indigenous populations and colonizers.
Not surprisingly, the problems of interlinguistic and intercultural mediation in
colonial settings have given rise to a large number of narratives, some of which
have gone on to lead a life of their own as powerful myths in the grey zone
between fact and fiction. Examples include La Malinche and other interpreters
of the conquistadores (see LATIN AMERICAN TRADITION) and the local
interpreters in Africa’s Frenchspeaking
colonies (e.g. Ahmadou Kourouma’s
Monnè, outrages et défis , 1990 and Amadou Hampâté Bâ’s L’étrange destin
de Wangrin, 1973; see also AFRICAN TRADITION).
The translator’s ability to ‘make a difference’ can have potentially heroic or
tragic dimensions, as in the three kinds of stories just surveyed. But in many
narratives, the translator’s agency and impact on history will have more modest
dimensions that might correspond to the endeavours of ‘ordinary’ people simply
going about their everyday business, trying to preserve their moral integrity as
well as character and circumstances permit. This fourth category typically
includes stories involving the multilingual encounters and experiences of
individual travellers, immigrants, nomads, expatriates, refugees and the like
(involving changes of geographical space) and stories set in multicultural
cosmopolitan settings (where interlingual and intercultural contacts occur
regardless of changes of place). Their success and topicality today follow from
the processes of internationalization in our recent history and from the resistance
and anxieties these seem to be engendering. Like ‘travel’, ‘translation’ has
become a kind of master metaphor epitomizing our present condition humaine
in a globalized and centreless context, evoking the human search for a sense of
self and belonging in a puzzling world full of change and difference.
These stories are likely to describe multilingualism and translation in terms of
subjective experience and personal identity rather than in the larger perspective
of human history. History is of course present in them, conditioning experience
and agency, but the translator is not necessarily portrayed as being in a position
become a kind of master metaphor epitomizing our present condition humaine
in a globalized and centreless context, evoking the human search for a sense of
self and belonging in a puzzling world full of change and difference.
These stories are likely to describe multilingualism and translation in terms of
subjective experience and personal identity rather than in the larger perspective
of human history. History is of course present in them, conditioning experience
and agency, but the translator is not necessarily portrayed as being in a position
to substantially change the course of events. The translator’s experience often
shows the following affective components: trust (the interlocutors who do not
know the ‘other’ language lay their fate in the hands of the translator) and
loyalty (how to balance the conflicting loyalties that the translator may have or
develop towards the sender of the original and/or the ultimate receivers?);
invisibility and personal ambition (given the frequent lack of social
recognition of the translator’s work, how to resist frustration and the temptation
to ‘usurp’ the original author’s role?); untranslatability (given all these
pressures, how can translation ever be unproblematic or straightforward?);
trauma (how to live with the weight of terrible experiences that the translator
may have to absorb and express in his or her own words?); and last but not
least, identity (how can translators prevent the permanent oscillations of
empathy and sympathy, the neverending
switching and adjusting to other
parties, from fragmenting,
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eroding or dislocating their sense of self, leaving them in a space ‘inbetween’?).
The more such issues are brought into play, the more the focus shifts from the
‘objective’ reality of the translator’s impact to the subjective, emotional and
experiential dimension of how the process affects individuals and communities.
Something along these lines happens in a wide range of plays (e.g. Brian Friel’s
Translations, 1981), aphoristic notes (Carlos Batista’s Bréviaire d’un
traducteur, 2003), diaries (Michel Orcel’s Les larmes du traducteur, 2001),
films (Lost in Translation, dir. Sofia Coppola, 2003), and especially short
stories and novels: Isaac Babel’s ‘Guy de Maupassant’ (1932), Deszö
Kosztolanyi’s ‘Le traducteur cleptomane’ (1933/1985), Ingeborg Bachmann’s
Simultan (1972), Francesca Duranti’s La casa sul lago della luna (1984),
Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson’s Absolution (1991), Just Ward’s The Translator
(1991), Javier Mar’as’s Corazón tan blanco (1992), Michael Ondaatje’s The
English Patient (1992), David Malouf’s Remembering Babylon (1993),
Barbara Wilson’s Trouble in Transylvania (1993), Suzanne Glass’s The
Interpreter (1999), Mikael Niemi’s Populärmusik från Vittula (2000), José
Carlos Somoza’s La caverna de las ideas (2000; translated by Sonia Soto as
The Athenian Murders, 2001), John Crowley’s The Translator (2002),
Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated (2002), and Claude
Bleton’s Les nègres du traducteur (2004), among others. Some of these
narratives reflect the growing fascination of novelists with the very process of
textual representation which has produced the highly selfreferential
works
known as metafiction. Not surprisingly, in metafictional writing by the likes of
Borges, Cortázar, Garc’a Márquez, Vargas Llosa, Nabokov and Calvino,
translation is the object of much speculation. In a number of cases, the recourse
to PSEUDOTRANSLATION is part of a wider metafictional strategy.
One is struck by the growing number of fictional texts that stage polyglot
characters and translation scenes. Moreover, at the metalevel
of translation
criticism and translation studies, these fictional representations are attracting
increasing levels of attention, indeed to the point that ‘the fictional turn’ in
translation studies has recently begun to serve as a catchphrase. In several
cases, this trend signals a postmodern and countercultural
critique of rational
science: narrated singular experience is trusted more than the lifeless generalities
of empirical research.
See also:
MOBILITY; MULTILINGUALISM.
Further reading
Sternberg 1981; Thieme 1995; Mossop 1996; Hoenselaars and Buning 1999;
Cronin 2000; Pagano 2000; Delabastita 2002; Gentzler 2002b; Pagano 2002;
Cronin 2003; StrümperKrobb
2003; Barnett 2004; Delabastita 2004, 2005;
Delabastita and Grutman 2005a; Maier 2006.