Post-Colonial Approaches To Translation Studies: An Overview
Post-Colonial Approaches To Translation Studies: An Overview
Post-Colonial Approaches To Translation Studies: An Overview
Received: In this new age, translation studies draw more interest as the trend grows.
21 Dec, 2020 Postcolonial Theory identifies a body of thinking that is generally concerned
with the political, aesthetic, technological, historical and social impact of
Accepted:
European colonial rule across the world from the 18th to the 20th century. This
01 Jan, 2021 study aims to spot the postcolonialism focusing on a variety of its translation
approaches. It traces two parallel lines of the puzzle over translation. One of
which focuses on unequal power relations between cultures, and the second
one distinguishes post-colonial translation approaches by analyzing
intercultural interactions in environments characterized by uneven power
relations. The two lines mainly contributed to illuminate the role of power in
the production and reception of translations. However, it is not clear that the
post-colonial paradigm can be extended to multiple interlingual interactions
with a marginal difference of power relations. Postcolonial approaches are
mainly concerned with cultural translation, power, and hybridity, which are
figuratively interpreted as a transition between cultures, and have had little
respect for language concerns. Whereas, translation studies emphasize on the
standard of translation as a linguistic observe that requires intercultural
mediation.
1. Introduction
In recent years, postcolonialism has drawn the interest of many translation scholars.
While its in-depth scope is largely approximate, postcolonialism is commonly used to
include studies of the history of previous colonies; studies of powerful European empires;
resistance to trustee interests; and, more broadly speaking, studies of the outcome of the
imbalance of power relations between colonized and beginners as well. (Mambrol, 1999,
“Post-Colonial Translation: Theory and Practice”). The subsequent crossover between
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1. Department of English, Lahore Leads University, Lahore- Pakistan
2. Department of English, Lahore Leads University, Lahore- Pakistan
Post-Colonial Approaches to Translation Studies: An Overview
completely different modern disciplines is often seen Simon and Lefevere essays appear in
the collections of post-colonial translation writings, and Simon himself has an intensive
relationship with the post-colonialist Spivak (Mambrol, 1999, “Post-Colonial Translation:
Theory and Practice”). Spivak's seminal article, 'The Politics of Translation,' (19992/2003),
draws together feminist, post-colonialist, and post-structuralist approaches (Mambrol, 1999,
“Post-Colonial Translation: Theory and Practice”). Tensions between the different
approaches are highlighted with Spivak speaking out against Western feminists who want
feminist literature from outside Europe to be converted into the language of power, English.
Such translation, read in Spivak, is widely articulated in 'translates,' which eliminates the
identity of politically less powerful people and cultures:
In the act of wholesale translation into English, there can be a betrayal of the
democratic ideal into the law of the strongest. This happens when all the literature of the
Third World gets translated into a sort of with-it translates so that the literature by a woman
in Palestine begins to resemble, in the feel of its prose, something by a man in Taiwan.
(Mambrol, 1999, “Post-Colonial Translation: Theory and Practice”).
The question posed in any reader's mind is how post-colonialism came into being.
The reason is that as people travel, they carry with them their languages, their cultural
traditions, and their systems of belief. Hence, their interactions with ‘others’, ultimately
require some sort of translation.
Although such debates are superficial in each linguistic and cultural sphere, there
should be a good deal of interest at this time in the theory and practice of translation. This
interest has grown in two nominally distinct but connected areas. One of which can loosely
be termed as post-colonial theory, and the other as translation studies. Both have steadily
gained popularity over the last decades of the 20th century. However, significant differences
in post-colonial approaches in the way translation is perceived and in the way translation
terminology is being used, have triggered some students to see these areas as unfriendly to
each other (Ivison,2020). This study tracks these two distinct lines of theorizing on
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Farzana Ilyas, Dr. Shahid Hussain Shahid
translation and postcolonialism, and examines how research is actually progressing towards
greater convergence between them – integration that provides promising new possibilities
for each area in the long run. (Bassnett 2016, Postcolonialism and/as Translation).
2. Translation Study
The term 'translation' has several meanings. It can mean a product (translated text)
or a procedure (act of translating). The 'translation process' between two different written
languages includes the translation of the original text from the 'source language' (SL) to the
'target text' (TT) in a different verbal language or 'target language'(Li). Translation study
means that “Language studies could be a scholarly interdisciplinary involved with the
formal analysis of language, definition, and localization theory, rationalization, and
implementation. Translation Studies as associate interdisciplinary borrows plenty from the
various fields of analysis that facilitate translation” (Holmes, 1998).
Munday describes the translation process as "translating the original written text
(source text or ST) or the original verbal language (source language or SL) into a written
text (target text or TT) in a different verbal language (target language or TL)" (Holmes,
1998).
The 'source text' is the original document you need to translate, and the 'target text'
is the actual translated document. 'Source words' refers to the number of words in the
original language and 'target words' refers to the number of words in the converted
document. In plain terms, the source language is the language to be translated, e.g., the
source language is Urdu when it needs to be translated into English (Ivison, 2020).
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Post-Colonial Approaches to Translation Studies: An Overview
3. Postcolonialism
The "post" prefix of the "post-colonial concept" has been carefully discussed, but
it has never indicated that colonialism has ended. Indeed, many post-colonial concepts are
concerned with the residual styles of colonial authority since the formal end of the Empire.
Other kinds of post-colonial concepts are freely seeking to assume a future after colonization
which has yet to come into existence (Bassnett, 1999).
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Farzana Ilyas, Dr. Shahid Hussain Shahid
translation theory and cultural theory. Jointly, moreover, he reveals that these discussions
take up problems pretty much the same as those involved with post - colonialism. The
connection between linguistic theory, cultural theory and therefore the historical and
political context of China's complex relations with the West should be understood within
the context of Chinese cultural history. Chan remains vigilant to use post-colonial theory as
an example though. The distinctiveness of the Chinese case forces one to revise the criteria
within the postcolonial theorizing feature (Gouanvic, 2018).
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Post-Colonial Approaches to Translation Studies: An Overview
The questions of engagement, action and struggle are indeed central. Since, due to
their complicity in the systems of coercion, exploitation and colonial administration, issues
of illustration and interaction with the opposition have gained an oppositional rebellion
character. Herein, it is sometimes argued, the strengths still lie because of the shortcomings
of post-colonial translation methods (Shamma, 2009).
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Farzana Ilyas, Dr. Shahid Hussain Shahid
Since many translation scholars are concerned in many respects with both theories
and approaches to translation in a post-colonial context, the post-colonial translation study
takes many forms. Some are based on the philosophy and experience of translation from an
Indian perspective. For example, in Gayatri Spivak's essay ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’
(1988) and her book ‘Outside the Teaching Machine’ (1993), as well as Tejaswini
Niranjana's book ‘Siting Translation: History, Post-Structuralism and the Colonial Context’
(l992). Others take the translation of Irish literature as a subject. For example, Michael
Cronin's Translating Ireland (1996) and Maria Tymoczko's Translation in a ‘Post-Colonial
Context: Early Irish Literature in English Translation’ (1999). Likewise, several projects
involving the discovery and celebration of history, both cultural and linguistic, e.g. Samia
Mehrez ‘Translation and Postcolonial Experience: the Francophone North African Text'
(1992).
6. Cultural Turn
Distinct from post-colonial concept and practice, however parallel it might be,
cultural anthropology has also been an increasingly popular form of translation terms in the
last few years of the 20th century. The term 'cultural translation' has come into vogue here
each as a particular way of fostering a dialogue of complicated approaches in which
anthropological researchers have been entangled, as well as a form of rhetorical (and in turn,
all too often easy) catch-the-serious approach to understanding more than one signaling
system throughout and across cultural boundaries, wherein several differentiating elements
had been at work (Bassnett & Trivedi, 2012). In 1990, Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere,
two distinguished researchers of translation studies, exquisitely declared what had been a
few times below the "cultural turn" of translation studies. In short, they visualized that
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Post-Colonial Approaches to Translation Studies: An Overview
neither the word, nor the text, however the culture becomes the operational unit’ of
translation" (Lefevere & Bassnett, 2016). In modern western translation research, every
cultural college, diagrammatic by Andrew Lefevere and Susan Bassnett, and polysystem
college, has grown! Tamar Even-Zohar and Giden Tory, once described the cultural level
of translation and expressed their understanding of the effect and restriction of the translated
text in the objective way of life and on the wider issues of context. Thus, "translating"
becomes a challenge when negotiating the norms of one tradition in the phrases of another's
norms (Profile, 2007). Supply and target cultures are designed as substantially one-of-a-
kind; however, equal cultural structures may have greater or less equal control to create and
handle the paintings of the interpreter to fulfil the goal-cultural needs.
As previously acclaimed, the cultural turn in translation studies has broadened the
boundaries of analysis of translation from narrowly linguistic to socio-cultural (Bassnett,
1999). The cultural turn served the function of conveying philosophical issues back to the
debate on translation which represented a straightforward break from earlier strategies of
treating translation centered on decontextualized concepts of loyalty and precision
(Mambrol, 1999).
Translation history research has shown, however, that translators have exploited
texts for the benefit of the receiving population. Particularly, translations from non-
European languages into European languages have been produced and mutual discrepancies
or areas in national literary histories have been discovered. Study of the history of translation
has shown, however that translators have exploited texts for the benefit of the receiving
community, particularly as translations from non-European languages into European
languages and jointly exposed gaps or places in national literary historiography that would
be dealt with solely through recognizing the importance of translation in particular.
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argument that the translation has played a vigorous role within the established method,
associating degrees in the distributive and ideologically oriented representation of the
inhabited populations. (University, Purdue 1990, Post-Colonial Criticism).
A comparison that feminist theorists have drawn between the traditional male-
driven interpretation of translations and the ladies, thus, has been used by the colony as a
related degree imitative and inferior travel copy whose suppressed identity has been
overwritten by the colonizing (Routledge, 2001).
The key accomplishment of post-colonial studies has been their discovery of the
dependent relation between language and culture within the colonial context. However, they
uncover Western translation practices that have been publicized, sponsored, and perpetuated
by colonial enlargement (De La Garza & Ono, 2015).
In an article in 1978, the Israeli scholar Itamar Even-Zohar noted that there were
times when a great deal of translation activity had taken place and different periods when
extraordinarily little to nothing had been translated, and that certain cultures had been
translated over others (Bassnett & Trivedi, 1999).
7. Power Turn
The "power turn" in Translation Studies links with broader studies in politics,
culture and society as well as with discussions of translation and gender, post-colonial
theory, and translation ethics. The core intersection of translation studies and post-colonial
theory is power relations. Tejaswini Niranjana's ‘Siting Translation: History, Post-
Structuralism’, and even the Colonial Context portrays the post-colonial picture as still
scored by traveler colonialism' (Niranjana, 1992). She sees the literary translation of the
discourses that 'inform the hegemonic apparatuses that belong to the philosophical system
of colonial rule. Niranjana's emphasis on the approach of translation into English has
generally been used by colonial power to construct a rewritten image of the 'East' that has
returned to reality. It offers alternate explanations of the colonizer's imposition of
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Post-Colonial Approaches to Translation Studies: An Overview
philosophical principles. They range from missionaries who run colleges for the colonized,
and who worked together as linguists and translators to ethnographers who documented
native language grammars. Niranjana sees all these teams as 'participating in the
monumental project of assortment and codification based on the colonial power' (Niranjana
1992, p. 34). Specifically, it targets the role of translation inside this power structure:
“Translation as a observe shapes, and takes form among, the asymmetrical relations
of power that operate below using. (Niranjana, 1992: 2) what is more, she goes on to criticize
translation studies itself for its mostly western orientation and for 3 main failings that she
sees ensuing from this” (pp. 48–9):
(1) Until recently, translation studies have not considered the issue of the power gap between
entirely different languages.
(2) That the ideas underlying a lot of Western translation theory are corrupted ('its notions
of text, writers, and the means which are based on a simple, naively figurative theory of
language').
(3) That the 'humanistic enterprise’ of translation needs to be questioned since translation
into the language of western philosophy builds a conceptual picture of colonial dominance
within the colonial context (Niranjana, 1992). Niranjana writes from an avowed
poststructuralist viewpoint. This overlap is representative of the relationship between the
different facets of cultural studies and the mechanism by which they communicate with
translation studies. There is no question that these conceptualizations, original and
stimulating as they are, are profoundly affected by the cultural and political contexts in
which they are based. In any case, we have a colonial policy that emphasizes, as it were,
discursive subjugation by translation and vocabulary.
However, one wonders if a similar strategy of resistance that Rafael and Bhabha,
as cited in Shamma, (2009), would have some effect on a believing power that has little
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interest in converting the settled to its own culture, but only in appropriating their land,
taking their property, and exploiting it for material advantage.
Despite these difficulties, the issues of the first seminal studies are still of interest
to students to explore the origins and consequences of colonial power. Even, the unorthodox
feminist criticism of Spivak (e.g., Spivak 1996) is typically paired with Derrida's treatment
of writing for the inscription of distinction as any supply and expression of the demand for
influence with a focus on the intrinsic aggression of those inscriptions and the 'deferrals' of
which are inherent in their constituent texts and narratives (Susan, 2016).
8. Hybridity
"Hybridity is the sign of the productivity of colonial power, its shifting forces and
fixities; it's the name for the strategic reversal of the method of domination through the
disclaimer. Hybridity is the reassessment of the assumption of colonial identity through the
repetition of discriminatory identity effects. Hybridity is that the name of this displacement
of import from image to sign that causes the dominant discourse to separate on the axis of
its power to be representative, authoritative. [---] [Hybridity] isn't a third term that resolves
the stress between two cultures, or the two scenes of the book [of English colonial fiction]
in a very dialectical play of ‘recognition’. [---] Hybridity reverses the formal method of
disclaimer so the violent dislocation of the act of settlement becomes the state of colonial
discourse" (Bhabha, 2006).
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Post-Colonial Approaches to Translation Studies: An Overview
(b) Cultural hybridity shall be seen in the way the translated text combines the components
of each supply and target culture. Settled at the interface between two cultures, translation
is the spot where components originating from various cultural backgrounds cross (Marc K.
H. Chan, 2010).
(c) Generic hybridity is the product of the mixing of discourse forms. In poetry translation
for example, the conventions of the target text (in terms of form of text, rhyming and
metrical patterns) are usually superimposed on the supply text (Farahzad, 2013).
Hybridity has been divided into more sub-categories: racial, literary, and religious
hybridity.
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1: Hybridity in race: Most East Colonial cultures have their own, localized terms to
describe people of mixed ethnicity, ancestry, and the term "hybrid" is typically not used in
the context of race. (In fact, this concept of victimization may be disrespectful to the people
2: Literary hybridity: what I call literary hybridity (hybridity in narrative form) is more
significant than what we now prefer to remember as post-colonial literature. In part, simple
trendy literary styles, such as novels and tales, are West-based writing trends, although they
have been rapidly adapted by colonial writers on the African continent and Asia (the first
3: Religious hybridity: This final subcategory of hybridity, which seems vital, partly as a
It is such hybridity through that the previous colonial intellectuals will accomplish
the relocation and reconstruction of their ethnical-based cultural identity. (Antunes et al.
2020).
9. Conclusion
theory, not just by their examination of real (post) colonial experiences, but also as a mode
of research that might explain critical queries of identification, differentiation, and power.
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Post-Colonial Approaches to Translation Studies: An Overview
Although their oppositional nature may usually have semiconductor diode for behaviors to
be essentialized, their results and approaches should have analytical potential for alternative
translation fields especially where (asymmetric) power relations play a process role. It seems
that the greatest difficulty in this regard is to pay careful attention to the marked differences
commonality and sometimes mutual causes that unite post-colonial critics within the field
Translation has been a major shaping factor in the growth of world culture, and no
study of literary studies will manifest itself, even if it is not linked to translation' (Bassnett,
2016, Postcolonialism and/as Translation). Portrayal of the cultural change were clear
enough. Thus, translation should be recognized as a literary practice central to the expansion
and development of individual literature. The purpose of our essential study on post-colonial
approaches to translation studies was not to invalidate all that was achieved by theorists and
critics, but to highlight that the wrong theoretical structures caused-and still cause-within
However, one should bear in mind that while the post structural structures used by
all translation scholars listed here rely on a wide variety of translation theories and in some
cases) practices. This purpose is possibly of such a positive consequence, not only in the
case of literary studies and translation studies, but also in the case of long-term studies of
translation studies should be checked and if found lacking, substituted. This approach of
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translation studies should be ready to carry out what Robinson (1998: 79)-dispute over
(which is already complicated enough); however, the chance of maybe coming back to grasp
however translation works in those contexts, however translation shapes cultures, each in
and at intervals their boundaries, offers a strong motivation to pass on despite the problem
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Post-Colonial Approaches to Translation Studies: An Overview
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