Mapping Memory in Translation

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Mapping Memory
in Translation
Siobhan Brownlie
The University of Manchester, UK
MAPPING MEMORY IN TRANSLATION
© Siobhan Brownlie 2016
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2016 978-1-137-40894-5

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Title: Mapping memory in translation / Siobhan Brownlie.
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Identifiers: LCCN 2015035442
Subjects: LCSH: Translating and interpreting—Theory, etc. | Memory. |
Collective memory. | Memory in literature. | Multilingualism. |
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Contents

List of Figures and Tables vi

Acknowledgements vii

Preface – Case study: Two versions of the Treaty of Waitangi viii

1 Translation and Memory 1

2 Personal Memory 19
Case study: Translating Katherine Mansfield’s autobiographical
short stories

3 Group Memory and Electronic Memory 47

Case study 1: Proz.commers and electronic tools
Case study 2: The community of feminist translators

4 Textual Memory 75
Case study 1: Retranslation of Zola’s Nana
Case study 2: A network of great historical documents

5 National and Transnational Memory 106

Case study: The translation of Sir Walter Scott

6 Traditions 126
Case study: CEDAW (Convention for the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination Against Women) and Saudi Arabia

7 Institutional Memory 151

Case study: English and French translators at the DGT
(Directorate General for Translation of the European
Commission)

8 Cosmopolitan Connective Memory 182

Case study: ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’ from Les Misérables

Final Words 207

Notes 210

References 213

Index 226

v
Figures and Tables

Figures

1 Bilingual supermarket sign, Kaitaia, North New Zealand,

January 2014 (photo by author) xiii
4.1 The Declaration of Arbroath of 6 April 1320 showing its
material appearance (with permission of National Records
of Scotland) 101
5.1 Pub Ivanhoé, Honfleur, France (with permission of
O. Lelaidier) 118
8.1 Use of the song title as a slogan and banner. Hong Kong
protests for democracy, 2014 (with permission of
European Pressphoto Agency) 189

Tables

6.1 CEDAW periodic review documents studied 135

vi
Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following individuals and institutions for

their contribution and support in my writing of this monograph: Eman
Almutairi, Manal Alzahrani, Ying-Fang Hsu, Olivier Lelaidier, Olivia
Middleton, Françoise Pellan, Cheng-Ian Shyu, Ursula Tidd, Huan-Chun
Wu, an anonymous reader for Palgrave Macmillan, the English and
French Departments of the Directorate General for Translation at the
European Commission, the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures at
the University of Manchester, UK, and the Palgrave production team.

vii
Preface

Two Versions of the Treaty of Waitangi

Growing up in New Zealand in the 1970s, I was very aware of the

marches and occupations undertaken by the indigenous people, the
Maori, to protest against loss of their land since colonial times. It was
only much later that I learnt that the story of the Maori and their
land was fundamentally a narrative of translation and memory. It even
seems that my background in various ways has channelled my interest
in the intersection of translation with memory. Before introducing the
monograph more formally, let me first give the reader a glimpse of the
fascinating story of the Treaty of Waitangi, which has shaped the his-
tory of New Zealand to this day. This story will serve to highlight how
the translation/memory nexus can be important and therefore is worth
studying.
The foundational document of modern New Zealand, the Treaty
of Waitangi, is the document by which the British Crown obtained
sovereignty of the country, making New Zealand into a British colony.
The Maori chiefs signed the treaty at a great gathering at Waitangi in the
North Island in February 1840. Because the Maori were not proficient in
English, the treaty had to be translated into the Maori language. The
Maori version Te Tiriti o Waitangi was produced by Reverend Williams
and his son just the night before the meeting with the Maori chiefs.
Here we encounter the translation issues.
In the Maori translation there are in fact some crucial differences in
meaning compared with the English version. While tangentially related,
the two texts are quite different in meaning. Here are the two most
significant differences for posterity:

Article 1
English version: the Maori leaders are to give the British Queen
Victoria ‘all the rights and powers of sovereignty’ over the land.

Maori version: Maori leaders are to give the queen ‘te kawanatanga
katoa’ – the complete government over the land.

viii
 Preface ix

Article 2
English version: Maori people are guaranteed ‘exclusive and undis-
turbed possession of their lands, estates, forests, fisheries, and other
properties’.

Maori version: Maori are guaranteed ‘te tino rangatiratanga’ – the

unqualified exercise of their chieftainship over their lands, villages
and all their treasures. (Orange 2013, 38, my emphasis)

‘Kawanatanga’ was a neologism at the time, related to ‘governor’, such as

the British governor of New South Wales in Australia, or Pontius Pilate,
Roman governor in the Bible. ‘Rangatiratanga’ was a term of Maori
derivation, relating to chiefly power; it was also used in Maori biblical
texts to refer to God’s ‘kingdom’. The word had been used in the 1835
Declaration of Independence to refer to New Zealand’s ‘independence’
(Orange 1997). Orange (1997, 41) concludes that based on the Maori
text: ‘Maori might well have assumed that their sovereign rights were
actually being confirmed in return for a limited concession of power in
kawanatanga [governorship]’.
Certainly there is a fundamental question of cultural difference here,
in that two very different world views are brought into contact. The tra-
ditional Maori view of land was that it could never be alienated from the
people who were born there, thus permanent sovereignty or ownership
by another people was an impossibility:

A tribe had authority over a given area, but the land belonged to
the past, present, and future generations. It was not an alienable
commodity. People were part of the land; they could not own it.
(Fenton & Moon 2002, 35)

For many Maori, understanding of the treaty text would have been
coloured by this conception. The English treaty text uses British terms
and concepts (sovereignty, ownership of land), which in the Maori text
are substituted by very different Maori terms/concepts (kawanatanga –
governorship; rangatiratanga – chiefly authority over land). So one
could say that a ‘cultural translation’ that aims to explain the European
concepts to the Maori has certainly not been undertaken in the text.
The additional question is whether manipulation entered into the trans-
lation process. If a more powerful Maori expression including the term
‘mana’, connoting supreme authority and spiritual chiefly power, had
been used to express what was being transferred to the British monarch,
x Preface

the Maori chiefs would not have signed the treaty. And assuring Maori of
their ‘rangatiratanga’ over the land was highly persuasive. As a mission-
ary, translator Henry Williams was convinced that British colonization
was the best future for the Maori people and for their conversion to
Christianity and Christian ways, so he would have wanted his transla-
tion to contribute to that goal. However, perhaps through his translation
choice Williams was also reinforcing a humanitarian intention of pro-
tection of the indigenous people. The British dignitaries signed the
English version, and the chiefs signed the Maori version. In reality,
the British and the Maori were signing up to two different treaties:
‘Inevitably both sides had different understandings; they were operating
from different texts and different world views’ (Consedine & Consedine
2005, 91).
This situation was bound to lead to conflict, and indeed in the years
following the signing of the treaty there were violent uprisings by Maori.
Armed confrontations took place in the far North in the 1840s, and
in the Land Wars starting in Taranaki and Waikato and spreading else-
where in the North Island. Suppressed by British troops, the conflicts
drew to a close at the end of the 1860s. Colonization proceeded rapidly.
The second article of the treaty includes a clause whereby Maori can
freely choose to keep or sell their land, and the price should be agreed
between the two parties. This was largely forgotten by the rapacious
young New Zealand government, and in many cases land was obtained
unfairly through confiscation, trickery, pressure on Maori to sell, and
land bought for a pittance. The rate and extent of land deprivation
were incredible, with almost all the 14 million hectares of the South
Island and about 3 million hectares in the North Island purchased by the
Crown by the late 1860s (Consedine & Consedine 2005, 95). The notion
of protecting Maori rights embodied in the treaty fell into oblivion,
encouraged by endemic racism, as the settler population became numer-
ically and culturally dominant. The treaty was even declared a ‘legal
nullity’ by Chief Justice Prendergast in 1877 (Fenton & Moon 2004, 39).
In addition, British colonization involved the policy of assimilation,
whereby Maori culture and language maintenance were discouraged
(Consedine & Consedine 2005).
However, here is where memory takes on an important role. The
Maori people remembered their treaty almost as a sacred covenant with
the British queen. As a people with strong collective practices and great
respect for the past, its events and ancestors, the treaty became part of
their collective memory: ‘the Treaty is now and has always been one of
the sacred treasures of Maoridom’ (Fenton & Moon 2004, 47). It is also to
 Preface xi

be noted that traditionally the Maori have a particular relation to time

and memory that differs from a European perspective. Orbell (1995, 25)
recounts that traditionally Maori believe that individuals today partic-
ipated in the lives of their ancestors, such that an orator describing an
early event in the people’s history might speak as though he or she were
present at the scene. In addition, it is believed that people today behave
as they do because of the presence within them of their ancestors, both
early and recent. Memory is therefore a lived and present thing, and the
traumatic past may be quite real. By the same token, an alternative pos-
itive and hopeful memory takes on great importance, in this case the
memory of the treaty. Maori transmission of memory occurs through
oral recitation and repetition of stories about the past to which children
are exposed from early childhood (Hayne & MacDonald 2003); in such
a context the exact linguistic expression of the Maori treaty is of impor-
tance. For the Maori people the first article of the English version of the
treaty had been the instrument of their loss of sovereignty. Yet astonish-
ingly, thanks to maintaining its memory alive, the Maori version of the
treaty, and also the second article of the English version that stipulates
protection of Maori rights, were to be the cornerstone of Maori protest
and resistance.
The treaty was central to the Maori struggle to gain rights from the
government and to regain status, power and possessions, culminating
in significant achievements from the late twentieth century. Over the
years since 1840 the Maori undertook actions to affirm their rights such
as holding conferences (runanga) and parliaments of Maori to discuss
their issues, and sending delegations to the British monarch to claim
their rights under the treaty. However, these actions led to little progress
in introducing any significant changes in the status quo. It was not until
the 1970s that the international context of a push for civil rights and
rights for marginalized groups of people, including indigenous peoples,
propelled the Maori to protest very strongly through land occupations
and marches, and to begin to make vehement land claims and fishing
rights claims, which were heeded. At the heart of the claims was the
challenge that the government had not fulfilled treaty promises. As a
result of this pressure and the conducive social context, in 1975 the New
Zealand government established the Waitangi Tribunal, whose role is to
undertake investigations and to provide recommendations to the gov-
ernment in detailed reports for the settlement of Maori claims through
taking into account the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi (Orange
2013). From oblivion the treaty has returned to the memory canon
and been given a fundamental institutional role. In 1985 the Waitangi
xii Preface

Tribunal was empowered to investigate complaints and claims going

back to 1840; it became thus a forum for resolving historical grievances,
and ‘the most powerful tool for change in the history of Maori-Pakeha
[white New Zealanders] co-existence’ (Fenton & Moon 2004, 51). The
work of the tribunal contributes to the process of healing memory of
long-standing grievances.
In the situation of two different conflictual versions with equal legal
authority of the ‘same’ text, feeding into two different group memories,
it is most interesting to examine how the Waitangi Tribunal proceeds.
It is important to note that in law it is not acceptable that a legal text
should be attributed two different meanings, so the treaty presents a
sticky case due to the divergent translation. In its deliberations the tri-
bunal draws on both the English and the Maori versions of the treaty;
neither text is considered superior to the other. The tribunal is not
fixated on particular wordings of the treaty, since focusing on discrep-
ancies between the two versions could lead to unhelpful debate. Rather,
the tribunal aims to apply the ‘spirit’ and ‘principles’ of the treaty to
contemporary cases. A 1989 tribunal report says:

The spirit of the Treaty transcends the sum total of its component
written words and puts literal or narrow interpretations out of place.
[ . . . ] The Treaty was also more than an affirmation of existing rights.
It was not intended to merely fossilise a status quo but to provide a
direction for future growth and development. The broad and general
nature of its words indicates that it was not intended as a finite con-
tract but as the foundation for a developing social contract. (Waitangi
Tribunal 1989, 52)

In its deliberations, the Waitangi Tribunal projects back to the past for
present and forward-looking purposes, since settlements must be made
for now and the future. Indeed, treaty principles are applied to present-
day realities that had no existence in the 1840s, such as contemporary
technologies and tourism. This process is typical of the dialectical and
directive functioning of memory.
One of the early claims presented to the Waitangi Tribunal seemed to
take advantage of a difference in the English and Maori versions of the
treaty. Absent in the English version, the Maori version talks of ‘taonga’,
undefined ‘treasures’ or all that is important to Maori, which includes
the Maori language (Fenton & Moon 2004, 43). A 1985 claim concerned
the promotion of the Maori language and education as means of protect-
ing treasured cultural features. Since then the Maori language has taken
 Preface xiii

Figure 1 Bilingual supermarket sign, Kaitaia, North New Zealand, January 2014

off on radio and television, in Maori-language and bilingual schools,

and in judicial proceedings (Orange 2013, 118). Memory of the language
has been revived with great success. In the North Island, in particular,
there is tangible evidence of bilingualism in the form of signs in both
languages (see Figure 1).
By 2002, 1000 treaty claims had been presented to the Waitangi Tri-
bunal, and by 2009 close to a full coverage of the country had been
reported or was under investigation (Orange 2013, 148). The process
of overcoming the Maori’s negative memory of the injustices dealt
them has followed the path of truth and reconciliation applied else-
where: official acknowledgement of past wrongs and suffering; a forum
in which those wronged can be heard (the tribunal); official apologies
(in 1996 Queen Elizabeth was the first British monarch to make an offi-
cial apology to the Maori for not upholding the treaty); and reparation
in the forms of cultural and political redress, financial compensation
and restoration of land (Consedine & Consedine 2005, 225–241). Mem-
ory of the past is used futuristically: by confronting the past, social and
political actors make real, concrete contributions to building a better
future (Bickford & Sodaro 2010, 68). The past is interpreted through
the lens of the present, and meaning is found in the treaty, a meaning
xiv Preface

created by the strange situation of original text and divergent transla-

tion, which now act as one combined memorial document. The case of
the Treaty of Waitangi illustrates the potentially highly significant role
of interlingual translation of a document for posterity, and the vital role
of the memory of cultural products (in our case the two versions of the
treaty) in society. There are surely many other cases where translation
and memory together play an important role; therefore, it seems nec-
essary that the combination of these two areas should be engaged with
explicitly by scholars.

In this monograph I aim to present a map of the application of memory

studies concepts and approaches to the study of translation. Transla-
tion studies and memory studies are both commonly recognized as
contemporary ‘boom areas’ in the humanities in terms of the num-
ber of conferences, publications and postgraduate students, and yet
the research located at the intersection of the two fields has been
somewhat dispersed and does not embrace the full potential of the
translation/memory combination. This monograph attempts to present
a global view of that potential. Following an initial chapter on the book’s
theoretical framework, each chapter starts by discussing a particular
type or types of memory: personal memory, group memory, electronic
memory, textual memory, national memory, transnational memory, tra-
dition, institutional memory and cosmopolitan connective memory.
The link with translation is then illustrated by one or two detailed case
studies in each chapter, which show in a practical way how memory
and translation can be brought together. The case studies involve differ-
ent languages: English, French, Latin, Arabic and Taiwanese (in addition
to Maori in the Waitangi story). Both literary and non-literary texts
are examined – short stories, novels, a song, charters, administrative
documents – so the case studies engage with a variety of real-world
contexts. There is indeed a definite emphasis on locating interlingual
translation as part of a broad context of other texts, events and social
circumstances. At first sight the case studies may look rather disparate,
but they are linked by two threads. First, the focus is on translation of
two types of text, literary texts and texts in the area of international
organizations and law. Secondly, a number of the case-study texts deal
with issues of human rights; this has been prefigured by the Waitangi
case, which concerns indigenous people’s rights. Other areas of rights
covered in the case studies are civil and political rights, women’s rights,
cultural rights, the right to communicate and indeed implicitly the right
to memory. With regard to methodology, in addition to textual and
 Preface xv

documentary analysis, material from interviews with translators and

informants is used.
Naturally my subjectivity in terms of knowledge, background, abil-
ities, interests and philosophical outlook shapes the choice of topics
and themes, methodological approaches, analysis and reflection in the
case studies and in the monograph as a whole. Beyond these aspects of
individuality, the book proposes an overall memory-based framework
and range of concepts and approaches that could easily be applied in
different case studies. It offers a new global perspective on translation
studies, as well as an insight into translation for memory studies schol-
ars. My hope is that the monograph will provide readers with a usable
map of the translation/memory nexus, and inspire further research in
this domain.

Siobhan Brownlie
Manchester, July 2015
1
Translation and Memory

Language and memory are intimately bound together, for not only is
language a memorial phenomenon passed down through generations,
but memory of the past and traditions are embedded in language and
in linguistic products. In her book on the complex historically changing
life of cities and language use in urban contexts (focusing on Calcutta,
Trieste, Barcelona and Montreal), Simon writes of how languages are
vessels of historical memory: ‘They reanimate the ghosts of the past,
they replay the stories of battles lost and won. They affirm entitle-
ment or they speak of displacement’ (Simon 2012, 159). ‘Translation’
may be conceived of in different ways, but it usually involves language
in some manner, and therefore will necessarily involve memory. Our
starting point is that translation and memory seem to be an obvious
combination for research purposes.
‘Translation’ is potentially a very broad concept and domain of study,
if we take translation to mean any kind of transfer and transformation.
Similarly, ‘memory’ can be taken very broadly as any kind of relation to
the past. In this chapter I first consider how ‘translation’ will be dealt
with in this monograph. I then introduce some memory concepts and
approaches that have been adopted by translation studies and compar-
ative literature researchers whose work is discussed here. Following this,
I introduce the approach to memory that is taken in this work with an
outline of the content of the chapters in the book.

Translation

Among the many conceptions of ‘translation’, I focus on three. A central

meaning of the term ‘translation’ is interlingual translation, transla-
tion between languages. Of course, as Naoki Sakai (2006) points out, the

1
2 Mapping Memory in Translation

way in which we commonly talk about translation between two lan-

guages masks the fact that the unity and stability of a single language are
a myth. The common representation of the act of translation as commu-
nication between two languages contributes indeed to creating borders
between languages, as signalled by the terminology ‘source language’
and ‘target language’. Sakai (2006, 71) argues that this regime of trans-
lation is a construct of modernity that valorized the national entity and
therefore the concept of unified national languages. In reality linguistic
borders are historically fluid and porous, and within what is recognized
as a single language there is much heterogeneity that translators have to
negotiate. Similarly, cultural knowledge is not unified or confined to one
sphere, hence the commonly used terms ‘source culture’ and ‘target cul-
ture’ mask the reality of a complex and fluid heterogeneity. The inherent
incommensurability of differences is smoothed over by discourse on the
possibility of translation, and the concept of a single language/culture
remains a powerful one with which we still work today as an idealized
form. In this monograph all case studies have interlingual translation as
their basis, but interlingual translation necessarily involves other senses
of translation.
Translation can be understood as a fundamentally important pro-
cess in human cultural endeavours. Bella Brodzki (2007, 2) defines
translation as an act of ‘critical and dynamic displacement’:

an act of identification that is not imitation, translation hearkens

back to the original or source text, and elicits what might other-
wise remain recessed or unarticulated, enabling the source text to live
beyond itself, to exceed its own limitations.

This approach is inspired by Walter Benjamin’s (2000) and Jacques

Derrida’s (1985) thoughts on translation, whereby original and trans-
lation are in a relation of mutual debt: the translation depends on the
original for its existence and the original depends on the translation
for its survival, which necessarily involves transmutation. The pro-
cess is potentially never-ending, since dynamic otherness and change
are principles of language and history. Brodzki (2007, 189) sees such
a process as not only being applicable to texts, but also informing
our critical cultural operations and spheres of thought and practice.
For want of a better term, we may call Brodzki’s perspective critical
processual translation. The abstract process-focused definition allows
Brodzki to understand translation as multiple types of cultural trans-
action involving transfer, interpretation and transformation, not only
 Translation and Memory 3

as the movement from one language to another and from one text
to another. In her book Can These Bones Live? (2007), Brodzki dis-
cusses case studies that focus on various types of transfer involving
critical processual translation: movement from one genre or medium
to another, movement from personal experience of a past event to a
text, and transmission from one generation of people to another. She
discusses literary texts in different languages and contexts that have
adopted and transformed an earlier genre, the American slave narrative;
the writer Jorge Semprun transferring his autobiographical experiences
into written accounts; and Claude Morhange-Bégué’s transposition of
her mother’s oral account into a textual account, which is also a case of
intergenerational transmission of knowledge (these last two cases will
be discussed in more detail subsequently).
The term cultural translation has come to prominence in recent
years in disciplines other than translation studies, and it is also used
by translation studies specialists. Several definitions are useful in this
book’s case studies. For translation specialist Maria Tymoczko (2007),
‘cultural translation’ means translating cultural aspects of source-text
content into a target-language text; that is, dealing with the cultural
issues involved in undertaking interlingual translation. Translators face
significant challenges. First, there are varying degrees of cultural asym-
metry between ‘source’ and ‘target’ cultures: environmental factors,
behaviours, social organization, beliefs, values and knowledge may be
very different in each cultural sphere, and thus the two languages may
not provide ready linguistic equivalents for the translator to use. A sec-
ond and more fundamental set of difficulties raised by Tymoczko (2007,
226–228) are the questions of understanding and interpretation. Draw-
ing on Bourdieu’s theory of habitus, Tymoczko argues that cultural
knowledge of a society is difficult for both insiders and outsiders of that
social group. An outsider might not have the capacity to understand the
set of social practices and attitudes of a very different group, and may
impose inappropriate presuppositions; inside knowledge is required.
However, an insider is in a sense too close to his or her own culture, thus
takes many things for granted and is not necessarily the most perspica-
cious observer. There are no definite answers to this conundrum apart
from the need for translators to undertake highly self-reflexive cultural
comparisons and knowledge gathering.
The issue of the insider/outsider position of the translator and the
tasks of understanding and explaining the alien display a clear affin-
ity with the work of the ethnographer. And indeed, the term ‘cultural
translation’ was coined from the mid-twentieth century in the field of
4 Mapping Memory in Translation

anthropology. Talal Asad (1986) locates possibly the earliest use of the
term ‘translation’ to describe the anthropologist’s role in the work of
Godfrey Lienhardt:

The problem of describing to others how members of a remote tribe

think then begins to appear largely as one of translation, of making
the coherence primitive thought has in the languages it really lives
in, as clear as possible in our own. (Lienhardt 1954, quoted in Asad
1986, 142)

The Waitangi case explained in the Preface actually involves the reverse
scenario, whereby British concepts needed to be explained to the indige-
nous people. In either scenario, ‘translators’ act as intermediaries who
may either contribute to imperialist agendas, or may also contribute
to cultural enrichment through introducing newness. Newness evokes
a more recent use of the term ‘cultural translation’ in cultural and
postcolonial studies, initially by the well-known theorist Homi Bhabha
(1994). Here it is a matter of migrants’ experience. The act of cultural
translation consists of the relocation of cultural items/system/thought
by repeating and reinscribing them in another cultural sphere. But this
does not happen smoothly: migrant culture presents an element of resis-
tance in the process of transformation, dramatizing untranslatability,
and there is a moment of overwhelming and alienating of the migrant
cultural tradition, but also negation as negotiation. The result of the
process is an ambivalent state of continuous splitting and hybridity, an
indeterminacy of diasporic identity as the result of cultural difference.
Finally, though, this condition of hybridity allows survival and ‘new-
ness comes into the world’ (Bhabha 1994, 227). Like other definitions of
‘cultural translation’ and also ‘critical processual translation’, emphasis
is placed on dynamism and transformative force.
Finally, social theorist Gerard Delanty (2009) has used the term ‘cul-
tural translation’ to describe the process of ‘critical cosmopolitanism’,
which bears some similarity to Bhabha’s ideas. The core feature of crit-
ical cosmopolitanism is that contact with the other institutes change
in both oneself and the other as a result of self-problematization and
reflexivity; mutual newness is produced. This is theorized for both con-
tact between the global and the local, and within multicultural societies.
The painfulness and torturous complexity described by Bhabha are no
longer present, but as with Bhabha there is a certain utopian spirit in
such writing. Buden (2011) indeed worries that Bhabha’s theorization
may romanticize migrants as catalysers of hybridity, failing to address
 Translation and Memory 5

their often underprivileged status. In summary, it seems to be important

to retain four aspects with regard to translation and cultural spheres: the
quasi-impossibility of translating in any fully satisfactory sense across
cultural divergence; the fact that translation nevertheless occurs; the fact
that translation occurs in specific historical and cultural contexts; and
the fact that translation in itself is not inherently moral or positive: it
can be a site of fruitful cultural learning and exciting hybridity, and it
can also be a site of manipulation, domination and reinforcement of
othering stereotypes.

Linking Memory and Translation

Memory studies is a necessarily immense and somewhat nebulous field,

since it encompasses research with a wide range of disciplinary origins:
namely, psychology, sociology, history, literary studies, cultural stud-
ies, media studies, heritage studies, archaeology, architecture studies and
more. The researcher in translation studies must therefore choose con-
cepts from the field that are useful for his or her particular research
project. In this section I focus on the work of researchers primarily in
translation studies and comparative literature who have engaged with
memory approaches and concepts.
Traditionally, memory has been conceived of as a cognitive capac-
ity of the individual person. Cognitive scientists have isolated different
types of memory, notably long-term memory and short-term or working
memory. Long-term memory includes ‘episodic memory’, the indi-
vidual’s memory of past events; ‘semantic memory’, the memory of
conceptual information; and ‘procedural memory’, the memory of skills
learnt through practice. Since translators and interpreters are necessar-
ily bilingual, one relevant topic of investigation has been to study to
what extent episodic memory and semantic memory are linked to dif-
ferent languages. Other topics engaged in by psycholinguists concern
the representation, organization and processing of words from two lan-
guages in bilingual memory (Kroll & de Groot 2005). Process-oriented
translation researchers have shown an interest in procedural memory.
Using experiment-based methodologies such as think-aloud protocols
and more recently keystroke logging and eye-tracking, they have inves-
tigated whether there are different modes of operating depending on
the level of a translator’s experience and skill; that is, in cases where the
translator is an expert or a novice (Halverson 2009). Working memory
is obviously of high importance for interpreters. Simultaneous inter-
preting is a fascinating activity for cognitive researchers: this type of
6 Mapping Memory in Translation

interpreting places a great burden on working memory, because inter-

preters simultaneously store information and perform other mental
operations such as comprehending, translating and producing speech
(Kroll & de Groot 2005, 462).
From a personal point of view, the kind of memory that leaves its mark
the most heavily in an individual is the memory of traumatic events.
Interest in the effect of traumatic memory on behaviour can be traced
back to the late nineteenth century, in particular the work of Freud. For
Freud, what seems inexplicable in present behaviour can be interpreted
by invoking painful and hitherto unacknowledged memories. Freud’s
idea of the ‘talking cure’, whereby bringing repressed memories to con-
sciousness is beneficial in order to diminish pathologies, has continued
to be influential today in psychotherapy (Whitehead 2009). In the late
twentieth century the proliferation of Holocaust memory writing was no
doubt due in part to a therapeutic impulse. The academic field of Holo-
caust studies, however, tended to emphasize the unrepresentability of
the Holocaust experience (cf. Caruth 1995). A burgeoning and produc-
tive area with respect to current research on translation and memory is
that of the translation of Holocaust memoirs and fictional works. Peter
Davies (2014) worries about perceiving translation uniquely in the con-
text of early Holocaust studies because of the notion that accounts of the
Holocaust are a distortion and a betrayal; in this perspective, translation
could be viewed as a double betrayal. In her study of the translation
of Robert Antelme’s well-known Holocaust memoir, Sharon Deane-Cox
(2013) adopts a concept from Holocaust studies: the ‘secondary wit-
ness’. This term arose from the work of psychoanalyst and collector of
video-recorded oral Holocaust testimonies, Dori Laub, to describe his
role as an empathic listener and witness to the oral testimonies. The
secondary witness plays a vital role as receiver, co-constructor and pre-
server of memory. Laub notes the imperative need of survivors to tell
their story, but also observes that ‘no amount of telling seems ever to
do justice to this inner compulsion’ (Laub 1995, 63). It is an interest-
ing and creative move to consider the translator as a ‘secondary witness’
with respect to the author’s recounted experience. Deane-Cox under-
takes a close textual comparison of Robert Antelme’s seminal depiction
of the concentrationary universe in L’Espèce humaine (1947) and its 1992
English translation. She finds that unfortunately the translation tends to
‘choke’ the memory conveyed by the original text, as it does not con-
serve its illocutionary force and the elusive and unstable meanings of
the testimony. Perhaps Deane-Cox has been influenced in her analysis
by the negativity surrounding thinking on translation from a Holocaust
 Translation and Memory 7

studies perspective, but no doubt it is an honest appraisal that the trans-

lation is somewhat damaging to the memory conveyed by the memoir,
even enacting a kind of forgetting of the source text. Adopting an overtly
prescriptive stance, Deane-Cox (2013, 321) calls for translators of such
texts to listen with the utmost care to the testimony of the author and
to pay close attention to the detailed choices of expression of the trau-
matic experiences, in order to transmit their illocutionary force in an act
of memorial guardianship.
Comparative literature studies of Holocaust literature are not neces-
sarily embedded in negativity. One type of translation context on which
Brodzki (2007) focuses is where translation (in a broad sense) allows the
survival of memory that is fragile through involving trauma. Brodzki
does not stress the impossibility of translation – rather, she is aware of
the enormous struggle involved – and in the end her vision is positive,
since it is framed by her definition of what I have called critical proces-
sual translation, inspired by Benjamin’s notion of translation as survival
from his famous preface ‘The Task of the Translator’ (2000). Benjamin’s
text illuminates how translation enables the memory of a text or event
to survive through providing an afterlife for the text or event. If there
is no such iteration, the text or event may be forgotten. Brodzki stud-
ies several cases of memory of suffering experienced during World War
II. The first case is the tortured transfer from personal memory of the
journey to Buchenwald, life in the concentration camp and life after-
wards into writing in the work of the well-known Franco-Spanish author
Jorge Semprun. Brodzki (2007, 188) highlights the intertextuality of
Semprun’s writings: each piece refers to previous works where memories
and events are represented differently, signalling that past experiences
and particularly trauma are never dealt with once and for all, since they
are subject to profound rethinking over time and with changing cir-
cumstances. Semprun’s writing challenged the idea that survival was an
achieved state. Rather than a frustrated inability to express the past, this
view emphasizes the normal memorial process of ongoing reconstruc-
tion of the past into the future. Brodzki’s second case is the transfer from
a traumatic oral account of a Holocaust survivor mother to the written
account by her daughter Claude Morhange-Bégué in Chamberet, a result
of secondary witnessing. The French original text has never been pub-
lished, so the published English translation, Chamberet: Recollections from
an Ordinary Childhood (1987), ensures the public survival of the account.
The final case represents a line of transmission from Brodzki’s own Pol-
ish Holocaust survivor parents’ oral accounts to herself to the reader
of her book, illustrating the inherent otherness and yet connectedness
8 Mapping Memory in Translation

with other humans’ experience that make translation as transmutation

and memorial survival necessary and possible.
The Benjaminian notion of a text allowing survival of memory has
also been an important emphasis in translation studies and compara-
tive literature with respect to memory beyond the World War II context.
Bassnett (2003, 294) writes of translation as a bridge between a past
text and a new text in future time, which extends the past text to
a new readership in a new context. The time and contextual differ-
ence (a translation comes after the thing it translates and is necessarily
in a different context) mean that translation is always a vehicle of
both remembrance and transformation: the work of memory is both
performed and diffracted (Brodzki 2007, 112). A translation embodies
memory not only of the source text, but also possibly of previous cri-
tiques, of previous translations, and of a web of other readings and texts.
Furthermore, through multiple different and ongoing translations and
other types of rewriting, a diversity of diffracted afterlives is produced.
Bassnett (2003) accentuates the state of the translation as encompassing
both memorial repetition and newness by referring to its function as
‘re-membering’. The simultaneous memorialization and bodily renewal
of ‘re-membering’ evoke Haroldo de Campos’s discussion of transla-
tion as dismemberment and cannibalism considered as destruction of,
homage to and a living on of the original text (Bassnett 2003, 299).
Brodzki (2007) discusses cases where translation allows memory to sur-
vive in urgent circumstances when a memory is fragile through being
expressed in oral form, and/or through involving endangered cultural
knowledge. The case of endangered cultural knowledge concerns an
Igbo woman’s oral account of an important historical event, the 1929
‘women’s war’ in Nigeria. In Echewa’s novel I Saw the Sky Catch Fire
(1992), the grandmother recounts this memory to her only (Western-
educated) grandson, who transforms the Igbo-language oral story into
one written in English, interleaving it with his own experiences. In
some cases ‘resistant translation’, maintaining elements of foreignness
in the text such as untranslated Igbo words, is a means of retaining Igbo
culture for the memory of future generations. Translation is seen as a
vector for intercultural and intergenerational transmission and survival
of memory, which is acutely important in a postcolonial context.
The case of transferring Igbo memory indicates that memory of past
events and tradition as elements of cultural knowledge can be con-
ceived as phenomena shared by a group (Igbo women or society) and
transmitted to a group (future generations). In other words, memory
can be considered not only as individual but as social. In fact, the
 Translation and Memory 9

individual and the social are intertwined with regard to memory. An

early thinker to theorize the social aspects of individual memory was
Maurice Halbwachs (1952 [1925]). Each individual belongs to many
social groups, and each of those groups has a shared memory involv-
ing past events and habitual current practices, which the individual
espouses and by which he or she is influenced. Halbwachs coined the
term ‘mémoire collective’, ‘collective memory’, to express this group
dimension, and since then other terms have been adopted, notably
‘social memory’ and ‘cultural memory’. Although certainly overlapping
in meaning, the term ‘social memory’ puts more emphasis on the social
processes of remembrance, whereas ‘cultural memory’ focuses more on
cultural products. The main point is that memory of the past can be
shared by members of a group. One issue that is important is whether
shared memory is a matter of amalgamating the memory of all the
individuals in the group. Olick (1999) argues that there is a difference
between ‘collective’ and ‘collected’ memory that has methodological
implications. ‘Collected’ involves studying the aggregation of a group of
individuals’ ideas, whereas ‘collective’ focuses on cultural patterns such
as shared myths, symbols, ideologies and representations conveyed by
cultural products and practices. In her study focusing on Oradour-sur-
Glane, Deane-Cox (2014) refers to ‘collective memory’. She also adopts
another concept from memory studies, ‘prosthetic memory’ (Landsberg
2004), which challenges the strict notion of personal experience and
memory. A vicarious experience, obtained from viewing or participat-
ing in an experientially rich mass-media production such as a film
or museum, may give a person, indeed potentially a large number of
people, a memory almost as if they had lived through the experience
themselves. Landsberg calls this ‘prosthetic memory’. Deane-Cox (2014)
compares the French and English scripts of the audio guide for visitors
to Oradour-sur-Glane, a village in France that was completely destroyed
and whose inhabitants were massacred by the SS (the armed wing of
the German Nazi Party) during World War II; the charred remains of
the village have been left intact as a memorial site. The visitor cen-
tre and French audio guide present a collective memory. Deane-Cox’s
analysis produces mixed findings: certain translatorial choices in the
English guide mediating the French collective memory have a negative
impact with respect to promoting prosthetic memory, but other choices
augment the likelihood of prosthetic memory, in this case the possi-
bility that English-language visitors to the site will have an experience
allowing them great insight into the past events and development of a
vicarious memory.
10 Mapping Memory in Translation

Other research in translation studies and comparative literature has

linked translation to cultural memory in various ways. Memory of
languages, memory of history and memory of traditions including lit-
erary traditions are pertinent. One interesting work mentioned earlier
is Simon’s (2012) book on ‘cities in translation’ as sites of the inter-
section of language and memory. Simon (2012, 157–158) shows how
translation plays the role of promoting cultural memory in two ways.
First, in a multiculturalist mode of linguistic and cultural ghettos and
respect for specificities, translation serves both to divide languages and
the memory they convey in the manner described by Sakai (2006), and
also to traverse that divide by allowing communication and understand-
ing of the other. Secondly, translation participates in a cosmopolitan
mode of mixing and hybridity in dynamic meeting places: there are
intense interconnections between the two main languages/memories of
‘dual cities’ such as Barcelona and Montreal. Furthermore, durable links
have been established across memories involving third-language dias-
poric communities in areas such as Barcelona’s Raval and in traditional
immigrant zones of Montreal, where translation enacts a hybrid entitle-
ment of residence and identity apparent in everyday usage such as shop
signs (recall the bilingual fruit and veg sign in the Preface). Both Simon
(2012) in her discussion of writers associated with linguistically and his-
torically complex cities and Oseki-Dépré (2009) in her study of poetry
translation point out how language is nourished by literary texts, and
how literature is a vehicle of linguistic, cultural and literary memory.
As well as being a force of remembrance through drawing on its past
tradition, literature is also constantly being renewed. This renewal may
take place thanks to translation, which introduces traditions and mem-
ory spheres from elsewhere. In describing poetry translation in Brazil,
Oseki-Dépré (2009, 401) cites public literary memory as having been
enriched by great translations of the Bible, Homer, Japanese poetry and
troubadour poetry. Another topic that has been treated in translation
studies is the translation of oral tradition: Bandia (2008), for example,
discusses the embedding of African oral tradition by African writers in
‘colonial language’ fiction, as well as the translation of such literature.
Finally, a recent development is a ‘sociocognitive agenda’ for transla-
tion research, which incorporates the dynamic interplay of cognition,
artefacts, workplaces and spatial context as well as sociocultural spaces
that are mediated by information and media technologies (Risku &
Windhager 2013). Although not explicitly stated by the authors, this
agenda can be interpreted as giving electronic memory a role in an
interdependent relation with individual and social memory.
 Translation and Memory 11

The application of the term ‘memory’ to computers, describing the

part of the computer that stores data or program instructions for
retrieval, was initially a metaphor from the individual human brain.
Electronic memory is an extremely important feature of life today, since
together with programming it is the basis of the multifarious electronic
tools and networks that are used ubiquitously in both personal and pro-
fessional contexts. Translation memory tools allow translators to store
translations in a database and reuse them in a new translation, as the
program proposes matched segments (O’Hagan 2009). Recent work by
translation researchers focusing on technologies has concentrated on
human–machine interaction, a relationship that is becoming ever more
important as translation memory tools become universal, and as they
shift towards integration with automated machine translation (Olohan
2011; O’Brien 2012). Electronic memory combined with information
communication technologies has also been the basis for new modes
of collaborative translation, which involve potentially geographically
dispersed translators forming a virtual group (Kelly et al. 2011).
An important basic condition with regard to human memory is that
not everything can be remembered. All memories are created in tandem
with forgetting, because it is impossible to retain all details, impressions
and voices of the past. As Nietzsche (1997, 63) points out, forgetting is
necessary for the health of an individual and a social group, in order
to provide protection from overwhelming noise and agitation. Further-
more, memory is often conveyed through a narrative form of some
sort, which implies closure, blocking out some memories and perspec-
tives. However, (details of) memories, whether individual or social, of
events or cultural products can always resurface or be unearthed, which
indicates that they are ‘archived’ (Assmann 2010). With regard to trans-
lation, although translation acts as a means of survival, we have caught
glimpses in the earlier discussion that somewhat paradoxically show
how translation is also a means of forgetting the source text. This for-
getting results from selectivity, transformation, censorship, replacement
and even obliteration. In some cases translations have replaced a source
text to the extent that readers treat the translation as the original text;
translations of the Bible, for example, have taken on that status. As for
selectivity, it is a necessary part of the act of translation, since in opting
for one interpretation or one choice of expression, other possibilities are
suppressed. In her discussion of translation and cities, Simon shows how
translation can be a force that effaces memory, sometimes for political
purposes. This happens in circumstances where one language/culture
has come to dominate in a city. An example is Istanbul, once highly
12 Mapping Memory in Translation

multilingual and multicultural, now primarily a Turkish city where a

nationalist campaign purged Eastern words through translation into the
Turkish language at the same time as purging ethnic minorities from the
city (Simon 2012, 156). Oseki-Dépré writes of another kind of memory
absence relating to divergent cultural memories. In translating works
by French poet Jacques Roubaud into Brazilian Portuguese, Oseki-Dépré
(2009) calls her translations ‘amnesiac’, without memory. This is because
the memory of Brazilian Portuguese and Brazilian literature is not com-
parable to the memory of French literature and its long tradition. So the
translation introduces a poetics from a heritage unknown to Brazilian
readers; the poem in translation stands in isolation without the memory
background of the original work.

My Approach to Memory and Translation

The studies discussed in the previous section indicate that the trans-
lation/memory nexus is a rich vein for investigation, but so far the
research concerning translation and memory has been undertaken in
isolated disciplinary areas, and has not been conceptualized as a whole.
This monograph builds on previous scholarly work through developing
certain approaches already explored, and also adopts additional perspec-
tives and concepts from the field of memory studies in order to apply
them in the study of translation. The most important contribution is
to present an overall framework for the study of the conjunction of
translation and memory. Within this general framework, it is apparent
in my discussion in the chapters and case studies that I prefer certain
perspectives and am less interested in others. I give little attention to
psychological trauma, pathologies of memory, forgetting or translation
as failure. Rather, my interest is in the variety of ways in which mem-
ory concepts can be brought to bear on translational texts and contexts,
the creative possibilities of translation in relation to memory, and the
achievement of human rights in which both translation and memory
participate.
The general stance that I take towards memory is that memory is
primordial in human society, since all aspects of personal and social
functioning are dependent on it. I define human memory as a mat-
ter of sociocognitive retention/(re)construction of something from the
past. Whereas we often think of ‘history’ as what happened in the past,
memory is primarily present focused, in that it concerns the perception
of the past through the prism of the present, or the reuse of the past in
the present. The past element may be an event, a person, a practice,
 Translation and Memory 13

a cultural product, a belief, an attitude and combinations of these.

A noticeable characteristic of memory is that due to its past–present
dialectical nature, memory is dynamic – conceptually and affectively
mobile. Conceptions of the past change over time, fitting in with an
individual’s or social group’s current perspectives and needs, and since it
is a (re)construction, memory is often contested, as different individuals
or groups may present different interpretations of the past. In its more
stable manifestations, memory has important functions both individu-
ally and socially: namely, in building relationships with others, creating
self and group identity, and providing direction for future decisions and
actions (Brownlie 2013).
I will now outline the different types of memory that form the chapter
structure of this monograph, and also briefly describe the case studies in
each chapter. Naturally, the memory-type delimitations are those of the
scholar and reality is made up of much more fuzziness and dynamic
fluidity, but the categories also correspond to groupings experienced
and recognized by social actors. The categorization of memory types is
strengthened by the association between memory and identity (a sense
of identity depends on a memory component). Above all, for our pur-
poses the categories serve a useful function in the book through relating
memory to translation in an overall framework for enquiry in this area.
I delimit nine types that are highlighted in the discussion.
In Chapter 2 I consider personal memory, which concerns vari-
ous elements belonging to an individual’s memory such as memory
of their past life events, and memory of knowledge, skills, practices,
beliefs and attitudes acquired. For Conway (2005), autobiographical
memory is essential in constituting a person’s identity, but it presents
a challenging research domain since the psychological nature of mem-
ory and mechanisms of recall of the past are complex. The case study
for Chapter 2 examines the memorial nature of the writing style of a
foremost exponent of the short story, Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923).
Mansfield has been chosen because of her highly innovative literary
writing of childhood memory, which I argue represents the fragmen-
tary nature of recall. Two autobiographically based stories by Mansfield
are the focus of study. The impact of French translations of the two
stories regarding memorial depictions is examined, and the notion of
a source text–target text co-construction of meaning is developed. The
study also explores the role of the translator’s personal memory in
undertaking translation work in conjunction with the agency of other
actors and artefacts. Thus, the notion of ‘distributed memory’ (see later)
is introduced.
14 Mapping Memory in Translation

Chapter 3 concerns group memory, defined as the shared memory of

past people and events and also of the practices, beliefs and norms of
a group. For seminal social memory theorist Halbwachs (1952 [1925]),
the main social groups of concern were family, religious group, profes-
sional group and social class group. In Halbwachs’s day such relatively
stable groups would normally have been in a specific geographical loca-
tion, whereas today there are many worldwide ‘affinity groups’ thanks
to virtual electronic links, and such groups are highly dynamic and
evolving. Electronic memory is of such importance in the work of
translators today for both translation and communication purposes that
it must certainly be included in our survey of memory. In the first case
study for Chapter 3 I discuss a virtual group of freelance translators,
‘proz.commers’, and focus particularly on their attitudes towards elec-
tronic memory tools (including machine translation) as expressed in
their discussion forums. A second case study examines another group,
contemporary ‘feminist translators’, and focuses on how they relate to
the founders of their approach, in other words how memory of the
1970s–80s Canadian founders and their translational practices is per-
petuated. The Canadian feminist translators became famous for their
politicized approach to translation in promoting women’s perspectives
and rights; the study shows how they remain an inspiration for an
international affinity group today.
Textual memory, the topic of Chapter 4, refers to the way in which a
text embodies memory of an earlier text, by including substantial con-
tent or key ideas from that earlier text. In literary studies this normally
comes under the notion of intertextuality; the concept is the same here,
except that there is more emphasis on the temporal aspect. This type of
memory is not singled out by specialists in memory studies, but natu-
rally it is highly significant for the activity of interlingual translation,
which has the memory of texts at its heart; related notions have been
mentioned by the researchers discussed earlier. This chapter includes
two case studies involving chains of related texts. The first study consid-
ers English retranslations of the novel Nana (1880) by Emile Zola, which,
after an initial self-censored version, restored memory of the original
text. Zola was chosen as a champion of the freedom of expression and
communication, and because of the large number of retranslations of
his novels. The second case study elaborates on the development of
the notion of universal human rights since the thirteenth century and
across the centuries by means of textual memory and dissemination
of texts through translation. The great historical documents produced
 Translation and Memory 15

leading up to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human

Rights (1948) have been milestones in the history of human rights.
Anthony Smith (1999), a specialist in nationalism, considers that
symbolic vectors such as myths, memories and traditions are essen-
tial in creating a national identity. National memory may encompass
complementary and competing perspectives, and it is often the dom-
inant sector of society that imposes its vision of how past events
are interpreted through such means as the media and the education
system. Olick (2007) finds that there has, however, been a shift in typ-
ical forms of national memory: although there is still a tendency for
those in power to use narratives that glorify the nation, governments
today are facing up to past injustices committed at the behest of the
nation’s representatives, as we saw in the Waitangi case. National mem-
ory remains strong despite the growing strength of supra-national forms
of identity and memory. I define transnational memory as memory
that transcends national boundaries, even if only involving a limited
geographical space. Shared transnational memory is forged through
movement and contact of some kind, whether of people or of cul-
tural products. Transnational memory comprises shared border-crossing
knowledge of past events and people, ideas through time, cultural
products and customs and traditions. Transnational memory may also
comprise a comparative element: memory of events that occurred in one
geographical and temporal space is linked to memory of events in a very
different geographical and temporal space, such that commonalities can
be recognized despite the differences. This is what Rothberg (2009) calls
‘multidirectional memory’; one example he gives is how memory of the
Holocaust has been linked to memory of slavery in the United States.
Chapter 5 encompasses both national and transnational memory, since
with regard to translation they seem to be intertwined. The case study
focuses on the prolific translation of Sir Walter Scott’s historical novels of
the early nineteenth century into numerous European as well as other
languages. Translation is shown to be a vector creating transnational
memory: translation propagated knowledge of both Scott’s works and
their historical settings, and also promoted linkages between the histo-
ries that Scott recounted and those of other places where the translations
were read. While enabling the creation of transnational memory, the
translational products often displayed national inflections. Scott has
been chosen because of his role as the creator of the historical novel,
the massive extent of the propagation of his works, and the fact that he
was perceived as a champion of the rights of struggling ethnic groups.
16 Mapping Memory in Translation

His case also illustrates the fickleness of social memory, as his works have
now largely fallen into oblivion.
It is true that a distinction can be made between memory of some-
thing that no longer is (for example, memory of a deceased person) and
memory of something that is continued on into the present (for exam-
ple, memory/knowledge of a traditional practice that is still followed),
but both can be encompassed under the term ‘memory’. Tradition,
which can be defined as symbolic group practices coming from the
past, is often associated with a national group, but may also be asso-
ciated with sub-national and transnational groups. Religious beliefs,
for example, operate at different levels. Chapter 6 focuses on tradi-
tion. I briefly discuss the notion of translation traditions from various
parts of the world, but the case study does not concentrate on this.
The case study of the translation of administrative documents between
English and Arabic examines the textual contact between starkly con-
trasting traditions: the tradition concerning women’s rights embedded
in the United Nations Convention for the Elimination of Discrimina-
tion against Women (1979), and Saudi Arabian traditions concerning
women. The study shows how traditions are embedded in language and
texts, creating potential obstacles for readers of translated texts. As we
also saw in the Waitangi case and in Oseki-Dépré’s literary context,
interlingual translation is a potentially difficult enterprise when there
is a lack of shared cultural memory between source and target cultural
groups, but translation can also act as a fruitful means for propagating
memorial knowledge across linguistic and cultural borders.
Chapter 7 deals with institutional memory, which refers to the
notion that institutions such as business corporations or governmen-
tal organizations have a history (including the history of founders and
foundational goals) and institutional practices that are remembered and
passed on. Institutions exist at various different levels, including increas-
ingly the transnational, with the significant rise since the mid-twentieth
century of international governmental organizations and NGOs. Thus
memory of transnational institutions contributes to transnational mem-
ory and in some cases to global memory. The case study for this chapter
concerns the European Commission’s Directorate General for Transla-
tion, the largest in-house translation service in the world. Interviews
with long-standing translators at the Commission reveal how transla-
tion activity there can be conceived as encompassing a range of types
of memory as well as institutional memory. The Commission is the
executive organ of the European Union, which was created in order
to ensure peace, well-being and justice across Europe; through the
 Translation and Memory 17

massive amount of translation into the 24 official languages, translators

contribute to disseminating these EU values.
The final type of memory in my categorization is cosmopolitan
connective memory, covered in Chapter 8. The term ‘cosmopolitan
memory’ was coined by Levy and Sznaider (2006). They described the
role of memory of the Holocaust as having the potential to be glob-
ally known; the event is recognized worldwide and cited in connection
with other cases of genocide in instances of multidirectional memory
(Rothberg 2009). Furthermore, Levy and Sznaider posit that memory of
the Holocaust has a global role with regard to human rights, constitut-
ing a powerful symbol of what must not be repeated. Hoskins’s (2011)
‘connective memory’ refers to our contemporary world of global elec-
tronic connection to others and to information, where our experience
of time is changed since while racing into the future, humanity’s past
is immediately at our fingertips in infinite memory banks. My combi-
nation ‘cosmopolitan connective memory’ highlights the construction
of shared memorial knowledge at a global level in today’s world. The
case study for this final chapter concerns a song from the musical
Les Misérables entitled ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’. This song links
to the memory of the human rights declarations of the revolutionary
period in France of 1789–1832. Translated into many languages and
also into many different English versions adapted to different contexts,
the song has been used in demonstrations around the world regarding
various causes related to social justice. It is proposed that the dissemina-
tion through translation and digital means of cultural products with a
memory component contributes to creating global solidarity groups.

The discussion in this chapter indicates that translation of various types

of text is an important means of transmitting memory. In fact, all
the various types of memory are intimately related to or dependent
for transmission on medial types such as speeches, books, newspapers,
music pieces, artworks, photos, films, television programmes, internet
sites, museum displays and monuments. Thus memory is always medi-
ated (van Dijck 2007), and the specificities of particular medial types
and genres shape the presentation and transmission of memory. If a past
event, person or cultural product is not remediated – that is, reiterated in
some medial form – it will be forgotten and disappear from the ‘memory
canon’, as Assmann (2010) terms the memory items that are currently
present in the shared knowledge of a group. Erll (2009) explores the
phenomenon of ‘remediation’, whereby a past event, person or cultural
item is repeatedly taken up in diverse medial forms over an extended
18 Mapping Memory in Translation

period of time, for example a historical event is recounted many times

over in diverse media and genres. Erll explains that it is through mas-
sive and ongoing remediation that an item can become a ‘memory site’
(Nora 1989), a recognized memorial item of strong and lasting symbolic
importance for its community. Translation as a form of remediation con-
tributes to maintaining items in the target-culture memory canon, and
to creating memory sites. Memory is also expressed in practical forms
such as conventional practices, rituals and ceremonies, which depend
on reiteration for their continuation (Connerton 1989). The important
question remains as to how the various types of memory enumerated
here may be inter-related together with medial and practical forms.
Some of the most interesting work in this area comes from psychologists
who have broken away from their traditional preoccupations restricted
to the brain. It is proposed that memory is distributed across the individ-
ual brain, non-organic memory (electronic memory) and artefacts like
photos and books, as well as across individual humans and social groups
(Sutton et al. 2010). Such thinking is based on ‘extended cognition’ the-
ory, which has been taken up in process-oriented translation studies (see
Risku & Winghager 2013, mentioned earlier). The question of memory
distribution as well as other features of memory will be further explored
and elaborated in the subsequent chapters. In the next chapter I con-
sider personal memory, then in following chapters gradually build up
from small to very large or extensive social groups in examining the
links between translation and memory.
2
Personal Memory

The term ‘memory’ is very often associated with the individual person
and their cognitive capacities. From a cognitive perspective, memory
is usually divided into short-term memory (also called working mem-
ory) and long-term memory. Improving one’s working memory is a
useful course of action for professional interpreters who, in undertak-
ing consecutive and simultaneous interpreting tasks, must make skilful
use of their working memory competence. Long-term memory refers
to our capacity to retain and retrieve information that is stored for
a durable length of time. Long-term memory is usually divided into
procedural (also called non-declarative or implicit) memory and declar-
ative (or explicit) memory. Procedural memory refers to habits, activities
and skills that we learn through practice. Declarative memory is further
divided (Cubitt 2007) into semantic memory (of factual or conceptual
information) and episodic memory (of events in which the person was
involved). The distinction between procedural memory and declarative
memory has been attested in studies of amnesic patients who were able
to learn, remember and apply procedures, ‘knowing how’, but were inca-
pable of remembering the details of episodes when they used those
procedures, in other words they failed in ‘knowing that’ (Cohen &
Squire 1980). In the second part of the case study for this chapter,
which concerns an individual translator (Françoise Pellan) and her work,
I will consider how translating depends on the translator’s semantic,
procedural and episodic memory, which is part of autobiographical
memory.
For psychologist Conway (2005, 609), memory is essential in consti-
tuting a person’s sense of identity, the self. He presents autobiographical
memory as a complex knowledge structure incorporating factual and
evaluative information about oneself, and a hierarchical organization

19
20 Mapping Memory in Translation

from general to specific, grouping memory of one’s past into general

themes (e.g. work, relationships), lifetime periods (e.g. working at a par-
ticular place), repeated types of event (e.g. departmental meetings) and
specific episodic memories. Without memory a person cannot func-
tion successfully in their life and in society. Bluck (2003) enumerates
the three main functions of personal memory as construction of a
self-continuity, using past experiences and accumulated information to
direct present and future actions, and establishing social relations and
bonds with others. It is indeed important to note that personal mem-
ory has a strong social dimension. Maurice Halbwachs proposed that
individual recollection is shaped by social frames of reference: ‘des sys-
tèmes de souvenirs dépendent des groupes divers auxquels appartient
l’individu’ [systems of memories depend on the various groups to which
the individual belongs] (Halbwachs 1952 [1925], 144). Personal memory
may be shared/constructed with other individuals, and also distributed
across non-organic agents such as photos, diaries, home videos and
social media pages (van Dijck 2007). This notion of distributed mem-
ory will be illustrated in considering Mme Pellan’s work in the case
study.
An important question with regard to memory is its relation to veridi-
cality. Conway (1990, 9) suggests that autobiographical memories may
never be true in the sense of literal knowledge of past events. It was
Frederic Bartlett in his seminal book Remembering (1932) who first pro-
posed that memory is fundamentally reconstructive. Bartlett explains
that memories are involuntarily always reconstructions of the past that
are heavily influenced by pre-existing knowledge structures and schemas
as well as current concerns; memories therefore evolve. Bartlett does
not deny that there are memory traces that record some fragments of
literal knowledge of the past event, but these are incorporated into
the construction of a memory (Conway 1990, 24–25). Autobiographi-
cal memory is then partly remembered and partly constructed. Nadel
et al. (2008, 45) report the updating of old memories based on new
experiences in related situations, and Conway (2005, 595–596) explains
how autobiographical memory is a balance between the demand of
correspondence to experience, and the requirement for memory to
be consistent with current self-image, such that inconsistent memory
details may be inhibited.
Although they are closely inter-related, it is useful to make distinc-
tions between neurocognitive memory traces, experiential recall and
forms of representation. Cognitive scientists present hypotheses about
the workings of memory in the brain based on experiments with
 Personal Memory 21

subjects and brain imaging. Generally, what the layperson has access
to with regard to their own personal memory is recall, which can then
be represented; with regard to other people’s memory/recall our access
is mediated by representations. Internal recall of one’s past is usually in
the form of images, feelings, scenes, meanings, factual information and
some verbatim phrases. There are various types of outward represen-
tation: memories can be represented in paintings, musical pieces, oral
accounts and written autobiographies, among other forms. Narrative
plays a special role with regard to memory, because accounts of memo-
ries of the past are often formulated as stories. A narrative can be defined
as an ordered account, usually with a beginning, middle and end. With
regard to autobiographical memory, we tell stories to ourselves and oth-
ers about our past (feeding into the reconstructive nature of memory)
and rehearsing the past in this way makes it stick in memory. Such
memory narratives are variable: different stories are told to different
people in different circumstances, and different stories are told across
time about the ‘same’ events. Narratives about the past also circulate on
a social level, for example stories of national and international history;
these narratives have a significant impact on people’s knowledge and
attitudes.
For Baker (2006), the main features of narrativity are selective appro-
priation, causal emplotment, temporality and relationality. Selective
appropriation means that a narrative is a selection of events from a
wide range of events that constitute experience; the selection may be
based on such factors as the teller’s purpose, theme and ideology. Causal
emplotment refers to the fact that a narrative presents a particular
causal explanation. Temporality refers to a narrative being made up of
a sequence of events, and relationality the idea that a narrative is made
up of logically connected parts that form a whole. In addition, narra-
tives often make use of culturally available materials such as pre-existing
story plots and character types. However, the actual experience of mem-
ory (recall) prior to recounting it may be quite different from such
narrative features. Due to human cognitive capacity and functioning,
recall is quite often partial, porous and impressionistic. Psychoanalyst
Donald Spence considers that patients narrating their past are in effect
‘translators’ in their struggle to convert private sensations of memory of
experiences into the language of speech and narrative (Cubitt 2007, 97).
What I will argue in the case-study discussion of Katherine Mansfield’s
cellular short stories is that this cellular structure has elements in com-
mon with a fragmentary experience of memory recall before it is tidied
up into a single narrative.
22 Mapping Memory in Translation

When studying personal memory, very often what we have as data

are articulations of memory in oral or textual form. In this chapter,
personal memory is discussed in relation to literary works with an auto-
biographical basis and their translations, and also in relation to the
translator’s agency. The case study for the chapter concerns works by
Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923), a foremost exponent of the modern
short story, whose greatest stories were based on memory of her child-
hood in New Zealand. Mansfield was one of the first short story writers
to take childhood memories as her literary inspiration (Boddy 1988,
159). The primary reason that I was attracted to Mansfield’s writing
is the ‘revolutionary novelty’ of her short story form (Fulbrook 1986,
63); indeed, her modernist innovations of the plot-less story, use of
stream of consciousness and emphasis on the psychological moment
preceded Virginia Woolf’s employment of these techniques (Mitchell
2011, 2). However, Mansfield’s rightful place among modernists was for-
gotten or neglected by literary critics until the 1990s (Mitchell 2011).
My focus is on two of her most accomplished autobiographical short
stories: ‘Prelude’ (1987a) and ‘At the Bay’ (1987b), and their translations
into French. The first issue to consider is how the author ‘translated’
memory of her childhood experiences into a literary form. The second
element of study in the chapter concerns the interlingual translator’s
personal memory as well as other types of agency that have an impact
on the translation product. The third part of the case study examines the
juxtaposition of source and target texts and their joint role in memorial
construction of the literary account.

Katherine Mansfield’s Stories as Representations of the

Workings of Memory

Katherine Mansfield, born Kathleen Beauchamp in Wellington, New

Zealand, left the colonial society of her birth permanently at the age
of 19 to make her life in England and Europe, since she desired to be
part of a more sophisticated cultural and literary environment. How-
ever, many of her short stories draw on vivid memories of her early life
in New Zealand. The two stories examined here both feature a depic-
tion of Katherine and her extended family when she was a child: her
parents, grandmother, aunt, herself and her sisters and younger brother.
The family is renamed the Burnells and her own ‘double’ is called Kezia
Burnell. ‘Prelude’ is based on the Mansfields’ move from their home in
Tinakori Road, Wellington to a larger property at a small distance from
the town in what was then the rural area of Karori. ‘At the Bay’ is based
 Personal Memory 23

on experiences of summer holidays spent at Day’s Bay across Wellington

harbour. Critics and biographers are quick to point out that the stories
are fictionalized modifications with respect to reality. Gordon writes:
‘She is creating much more than she is remembering [ . . . ] Everything
in the stories is unquestionably based on experience. But it is always
experience transmuted’ (Gordon 1974, xvi–xvii). The notion conveyed
is that the works are a ‘distortion’ of reality.
In the two stories, ‘Prelude’ and ‘At the Bay’, Mansfield deploys an
innovative cellular structure that she invented, consisting in the case
of these stories of twelve parts. Rejecting organized linear narrative, the
structure comprises loosely connected scenes in relation to the main
event that the story features. Links can be seen between scenes in terms
of thematic repetition, complement, analogy and contrast (Hanson &
Gurr 1981). However, the main impact on the reader with regard to
the parts of the story is rather a sense of randomness, changing points
of view, variety in style and content, and a focus on images, feelings
and fleeting moments. Critics have called Mansfield’s technique ‘liter-
ary impressionism’, finding it to be inspired by impressionistic painting
and by film montage (Sandley 1994, 73). In contrast to specifically liter-
ary approaches, which quite often refer to Walter Benjamin with respect
to ‘translating’ memory of lived experience into a text (see Bermann
2005; Brodzki 2007), I will take an interdisciplinary approach in dis-
cussing how Mansfield’s innovative story structure and writing style are
analogous in some ways to the workings of autobiographical memory as
conceptualized in contemporary psychological literature. The motiva-
tions behind this approach are the desire to problematize the common
notion of the writing as a distortion of reality, and the aim to discover
why as a reader I find her style so satisfying.
First of all, the two stories reflect the kind of things that are typi-
cally recalled in memory of one’s childhood (Conway 1990, 26): either
novel experiences (such as moving to a new house in the country) or
repeated occurrences (such as summer holidays at the same place over a
number of years). All memory specialists agree that images play a vital
role in memory. For Rubin (2005, 79), the strength of recollection of
an event is predicted best by the vividness of its visual imagery, and
a loss of visual memory causes general amnesia. Another predictor is
emotion: studies suggest that the emotional intensity and personal sig-
nificance of an event give rise to autobiographical memories that are
detailed, available for recall and resistant to forgetting (Conway 1990,
104). Thus, the significant presence of the visual and the emotional in
Mansfield’s stories corresponds with the prominence of these elements
24 Mapping Memory in Translation

in the workings of memory. As noted earlier, autobiographical mem-

ory is reconstructive. According to Mace (2010), memories of distant
times/events and voluntary retrieval of such memories are situations
likely to involve more construction than other contexts of memory
activity (recent events; involuntary recall). The mixture in Mansfield’s
stories of factual elements from her distant past with modifications and
interpretation is consistent with normal memorial processes. She is an
adult looking back at childhood experiences that are seen through her
intervening experiences and acquired knowledge. With regard to her
mother, a central figure in the two stories under study, she no doubt
retained certain childhood memories of gestures and behaviour. These
memory elements are then filtered through her later adult experiences
of her mother, her adult thematic preoccupations (she was interested in
society’s formation of children and women; Harding 2011) and her cur-
rent writer’s perspective with its sensitivity towards characters’ aesthetic
role and thematic coherence.
The fact that construction is involved in memory does not mean
that a tidy, coherent linear narrative is produced in recall. In an early
study, based on detailed observation and recording of her own mem-
ories, Linton (1986, 58) hypothesizes the general structure of events
in long-term memory. She finds that some events or episodes enter
into amalgams of logically unrelated items; such amalgamated events
are consistently found together in recall, probably as the result of sim-
ple temporal contiguity. In studies surveyed by Conway (1990, 127)
in which subjects were asked to recall an important autobiographi-
cal event such as their wedding day, it was found that all subjects
recall images, but that the images do not represent continuous action
sequences. Rather, they appear to act like ‘snapshots’ of groups of par-
ticipants or scenery associated with the recalled event. Furthermore, in
protocols subjects sometimes recall events and facts outside the targeted
event altogether, indicating the pliable structure of memory. Recent
work (Mace 2010) on the operation of remembering emphasizes mem-
ory clustering, which occurs through spreading activation: a cue or an
activated memory will activate other related or associated memories
contained within a network of memories in a chain-like process, result-
ing in a cluster of variously related memories being recalled. Memory,
of course, is always linked with its opposite, forgetting. Often the detail
of events is fairly quickly forgotten, resulting in discontinuity and frag-
mentation of the original memory. Conway (1990, 128) concludes that
most specific autobiographical memories are fairly unstructured and
rapidly degrade, preserving knowledge of one or two micro-events and
 Personal Memory 25

incomplete knowledge of chronological order. Given this discussion, it

would seem that Mansfield’s series of image-filled, impressionistic and
very loosely connected episodes in her cellular stories correspond with
an actual experience of memorial recall. In the short stories each ‘cell’
contains bits of narrative, description and dialogue, but the cells do not
constitute logically connected parts. ‘In the Bay’ embodies some sense
of organization, since scenes occur on one day from dawn till dusk,
whereas ‘Prelude’ gives more of the impression of a cluster of scattered
memories.
Psychologists generally conceptualize the autobiographical memory
knowledge base as being hierarchically structured. As already men-
tioned, Conway (2005, 608) conceives of the autobiographical knowl-
edge structure as a hierarchy, from generalizations from experience at
the top to specific episodic memories at the bottom. It is at the lower
levels that memory is likely to become patchy, whereas the higher levels
tend to be more stable. This stable aspect is reflected in Mansfield’s sto-
ries not only by the recurrence of characters and places, but also through
recurring themes such as the nature of children, the relations between
men and women, and women’s psyche. Importantly, Mansfield always
avoids explicit discussion of themes; rather, all is perceived by the reader
through the scenes in the cellular story, which resembles the sensory–
perceptual–conceptual–affective record of episodic memories (Conway
2005, 612).
A final aspect of Mansfield’s writing that can be linked to auto-
biographical memory recall is shifting focalization. Different parts of
the stories present the points of view and thought processes of dif-
ferent characters. Although the autobiographical experience was lived
by Katherine as a child, it is not always presented from the point of
view of the Katherine child counterpart in the stories (Kezia), nor from
that of Katherine as an adult. Instead, the author inhabits the different
characters, presenting their perspectives and thoughts, often through
interior monologue; and there are also sections of third-person imper-
sonal description and narration by an omniscient narrator. This shift
away from the perspective of the personal lived experience corresponds
with a feature of autobiographical memorial recall whereby recent mem-
ories tend to be in field mode (the scene is from one’s own perspective)
and more distant memories may be in observer mode (the scene is
viewed from the perspective of an observer self). According to stud-
ies, observer mode is also more likely when the original experience
was associated with a high degree of emotion and personal significance
(Nigro & Neisser 1983). The observer mode is a noticeable aspect of
26 Mapping Memory in Translation

reconstruction, which is a process both of memory and of the artist.

It should be noted, of course, that the complexity of Mansfield’s writ-
ing goes beyond autobiographical first-person field and third-person
observer to encompass the hybrid form of free indirect discourse and
multiple focalization, but one could well say that these so-called lit-
erary strategies are also the function of a normal remembering and
imagining mind.
It appears that the functioning of Mansfield’s short stories is true to
the ‘distortion’ of memory, which is a normal memorial characteris-
tic, such that it could be said that the stories’ structural and stylistic
features are analogous in some ways with the workings of autobio-
graphical memory. With regard to the innovative writing of Mansfield’s
stories, I contend that these cellular stories feel so satisfying to the reader
because of correspondence between the artistic form and certain psy-
chological features of autobiographical memorial structure and recall.
Having elucidated memorial features of Mansfield’s writing in ‘Prelude’
and ‘At the Bay’, let us now consider their French translations (which
enact literary memorial constructions in another language) and the
interlingual translation process, first of all from the point of view of
the translator.

A Translator’s Personal Memory

Early Mansfield translators working from the 1920s onwards are prob-
ably no longer living. I was lucky, however, to be able to undertake
email correspondence with and to interview the recent translator of
Mansfield’s La Garden Party et autres nouvelles (2002), Françoise Pellan.1
The Garden Party and Other Stories, first published in 1922, is a collec-
tion of Mansfield short stories that contains ‘At the Bay’ (La Baie), the
focus of discussion here. Of note is the fact that Mme Pellan had accom-
plished the translation 11 years before my interview with her, but she
was not depending only on her memory, since she had taken notes at
the time, which she consulted prior to our discussion. The following
account is based on the interview with Mme Pellan and complemented
by my study of her translation of ‘At the Bay’, in addition to an occa-
sional comparison with the earlier translation of the story by Marthe
Duproix. I trace the role of personal memory, specifically semantic mem-
ory and procedural memory, in Mme Pellan’s translation work, and also
adopt the distributed memory approach (van Dijck 2007; Sutton et al.
2010), which conceives of intimate relations between an individual’s
 Personal Memory 27

cognition and their contextual and social environment. This leads to a

broad examination of memory in terms of other pertinent actors, arte-
facts and apparatus as well as the sociocultural group of prospective
readers, all of which have an impact on the production and content
of the translated text.

Semantic Memory
Semantic memory is defined as the memory of conceptual and factual
information. The ability of a translator is dependent in part on his or her
memory of acquired knowledge of subject matter relevant to the transla-
tion task. Mme Pellan had built up knowledge of Katherine Mansfield’s
life, her works, writing style, context of writing and historical era over a
period of time. She wrote her doctoral thesis on the novels of Virginia
Woolf. It was when researching for her thesis that Mme Pellan first
came across Katherine Mansfield, since she wished to familiarize her-
self with the literature of the period and in particular with the friends
and rivals of Virginia Woolf, those gravitating around the Bloomsbury
Group. At that time Mme Pellan did not hold Mansfield’s writing in
much esteem: for her it was inferior to Woolf’s works, charming but
somewhat sentimental and superficial.
At the University of Burgundy Mme Pellan taught nineteenth-,
twentieth- and twenty-first-century English literature, principally nov-
els and short stories. It was in the course of teaching Bachelor’s-level
classes that she came to appreciate Mansfield’s writing. Her knowledge
of Mansfield deepened at this time, since she read the short stories
more attentively, as well as reading critical articles on Mansfield and
biographies by Jeffrey Meyers, Claire Tomalin and Anthony Alpers. The
enthusiasm for the stories on the part of her students contributed to
Mme Pellan reconsidering her earlier judgement. This revised judge-
ment and knowledge of Mansfield’s style were further reinforced when
she began translating The Garden Party:

C’est en faisant cours avec mes étudiants que j’ai pris la mesure de sa
virtuosité technique et stylistique, et du tragique qui est sous-jacent
à l’humour. Quand j’ai commencé à traduire La Garden Party, mon
admiration pour l’écriture de Katherine Mansfield n’a fait que croître,
parce que j’ai vu le texte encore plus près.
[It’s through teaching the students that I came to appreciate her
[Mansfield’s] technical and stylistic virtuosity, and to sense the
28 Mapping Memory in Translation

tragedy underlying her humour. When I began translating The Garden

Party, my admiration for Katherine Mansfield’s writing increased
further, since I engaged with the text even more closely.]

When asked about the impact of her knowledge of Katherine Mansfield

on translating The Garden Party, Mme Pellan says that it was indis-
pensable. Before translating she also conducted additional reading and
research, including reading a new edition of Mansfield’s correspon-
dence. The correspondence allowed her to understand what Mansfield
was aiming to do; it allowed her to comprehend each short story in its
context. Mme Pellan considers that her knowledge of Mansfield and her
writing enabled her to undertake the translations in a careful manner by
helping her decide between possible interpretations or certain render-
ings, which could also be further elucidated in the notes. An example
that demonstrates this comes in references in ‘At the Bay’ to ‘the boy’
in speaking of the new baby. Here is how this is treated at the first
mention:

Bay 97. On the grass beside her, lying between two pillows, was
the boy.
C 66.2 Près d’elle, sur la pelouse, le petit* était couché entre deux
oreillers.

‘Le petit’ is an affectionate expression, meaning ‘little boy’. Mme Pellan

adds an endnote explaining that the Mansfield family always called
Leslie, the only boy among the children, ‘Boy’, and that this custom
is reproduced in the short story.
In total there are 33 endnotes for ‘La Baie’. Their main purposes are
to give explanations of words in the original text or translation, and to
provide background information on Mansfield’s life and writing. The
notes are in fact just one aspect of the critical apparatus that Mme
Pellan was commissioned to provide: the edition also includes a preface,
author timeline, explanation of the genesis of the work and bibliogra-
phy. Detailed knowledge of Mansfield’s work was obviously necessary
for this critical work. The preface, for example, comprises information
on Mansfield’s trajectory as a writer, the reception of her work by critics
at the time, the reputation of her writing after her death, and discussion
of the content and style of stories in The Garden Party. This translation
commission involved a situation of dual agency in the form of translator
and academic expert.
 Personal Memory 29

Apart from source-text knowledge, the literary translator also benefits

from knowledge of target-language vocabulary, literature and literary
style. A noticeable difference between the two translations of ‘At the
Bay’ is the fact that the first translation by Duproix dating from 1929
(here labelled B2) uses subjunctives frequently, whereas Mme Pellan
does not. Use of the subjunctive in the first translation, particularly past
subjunctive tenses, may give the feeling of an earlier usage of French,
potentially contributing to mirroring the 1920s English style of the
original text. Here is an example:

Bay 85. As if the cold and the quiet had frightened them
B2 238. Comme si le froid et le silence les eussent effrayés
C 42. Comme si le froid et le silence les avaient effrayés

However, in the interview Mme Pellan argued that in 1920s French liter-
ary language, use of the past subjunctive was not compulsory. She cited
writers such as the young Colette who had a ‘lively style’. Therefore,
employing subjunctive verbal forms does not necessarily reflect usage
and capture the style of an older time period. The reason that Mme
Pellan often avoided such verbal structures was that frequent use of
them would create a heavy pedantic text, a style that is the opposite
of the lightness, liveliness and ease of reading of Mansfield’s writing.
Here we see how the translator’s knowledge of (historical) literary style
is important.
A final aspect of semantic memory to be discussed is the translator’s
use of her autobiographical memory in undertaking the translation.
Some vocabulary in the original text reflects cultural specificities and
corresponding usage in New Zealand English at the time. An example
is the term ‘coatee’ (Bay 91), referring to a garment for the baby, a term
that is not used in contemporary New Zealand English. In order to find
an appropriate term in French, Mme Pellan thought back to her child-
hood and words that were used at that time. She chose an old-fashioned
term in French, ‘burnous’ [baby’s cape] (C 53). Mme Pellan explains:
‘Quand j’étais enfant les bébés avaient des burnous, mais je n’ai plus
entendu ce mot depuis très longtemps’ [When I was a child the babies
wore ‘burnous’, but I haven’t heard that word for a very long time].

Procedural Memory
Procedural memory is defined as knowledge of skills that is not usually
articulated and is learnt from practice. The ability of a translator is also
dependent on his or her acquired skill, often based on past experience of
30 Mapping Memory in Translation

translating. Mme Pellan had translated one book for publication prior
to translating The Garden Party, Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. She
says that this was ‘une belle école’, an excellent training ground for
translating Mansfield. Mme Pellan had also gained much experience in
practical translation through teaching French/English translation classes
at the university. She says: ‘ces cours m’avais permis de me former sur le
tas, pas une approche théorique mais une approche très pratique’ [this
teaching provided training on the job, not a theoretical approach but a
very practical approach].
Practical experience led to the development of general goals for trans-
lation work. Mme Pellan considers that her experience in teaching
practical translation classes had an impact on her own professional
translation activities, because she maintained for herself the same
standard that she required of her students; that is, a high level of
accuracy and care in representing the source text in translation. Mme
Pellan considers that her dual background in linguistics and litera-
ture made her attentive to both signifier and signified, to denotation
and connotation, and to the sensory qualities of language and texts.
Through experience and reflection, Mme Pellan has developed a gen-
eral approach to literary translation that she expressed in the following
words:

Mon objectif principal [est] de permettre au lecteur francophone

d’avoir page après page une expérience de lecture aussi proche que
possible de celle du lecteur anglophone du texte en langue anglaise.
Pour cela [je tente] d’être aussi fidèle que possible au texte source, à la
signification exacte, au registre, aux connotations diverses des mots
employés, mais aussi au jeu sur les sonorités et le rythme. [Je tente] de
rendre tous les effets produits par le travail d’orfèvre sur le signifiant,
sans pour autant trahir le signifié bien sûr.

[My main goal is page after page to allow the French-language reader
to have a reading experience as close as possible to that of the English-
language reader reading the English text. So I try to be as faithful
as possible to the source text, to the exact meaning, register, con-
notations of the specific words in the text, but also to the play of
sounds and rhythm. I try to render all the effects produced by the
subtle work on the signifier, but without betraying the signified, of
course.]

This goal, however, is not easy to achieve, as Mme Pellan acknowledges,

because ‘on ne peut jamais rendre absolument tous les effets de sens
 Personal Memory 31

liés aux signifiant et signifié’ [you can never render all the meanings
stemming from signifier and signified]. Translation necessarily involves
some forgetting and selectivity.
One aspect of the translator’s skill displayed in the translation is her
handling of idiolect. The representation of idiolects of characters in
dialogue sections is a specific feature of Mansfield’s writing that is signif-
icant not only for characterization, but also for theme. In ‘At the Bay’,
apart from children’s idiolect, the character Mrs Stubbs is particularly
noticeable for her idiolect. In the interview Mme Pellan explained how
rendering Mrs Stubbs’s idiolect was a challenge, because variation in pro-
nunciation is more likely to be a marker of regional provenance rather
than social class in France. Her solution was to render the effect of a
low level of education by elided syllables, non-standard grammar and
confusion of vocabulary in the translation. Here is an example:

Bay 103. “I’ve just had some new photers taken, my dear” [idiolectal
‘photers’]
C 79. Mon p’tit, j’viens d’me faire faire des nouvelles photos. [elided
syllables, ‘des’ is non-standard grammar here]

The Translation as a Product of Distributed Memory

An individual translator is connected in many ways with social groups
and various agents, whose memory is influential in the translation work.
The translation can in fact be considered to be the product of distributed
memory across author, translator, other actors (persons consulted, edi-
tors), institutions (the publishing house), social groups (source and
target readers), various texts (intertexts, reference works) and material
and electronic agents (pen and paper, computer). Let us flesh out this
schematic outline.

Memory Distributed across Translator, Author and Texts

The production of Mme Pellan’s translation involves a collaboration of
author and translator whereby the translator goes beyond merely trans-
lating the words of the short story to engage with and narrate elements
of the author’s life story. The translator thus enhances the autobiograph-
ical memorial content of the work. She does this through the critical
apparatus, and notably through the translator’s notes. The notes are
used to link places and particularly characters of the fictional work to
places, people and names from Mansfield’s early life in New Zealand.
We have already seen this with the earlier example of ‘the boy’. Here is a
32 Mapping Memory in Translation

more detailed example, a translator’s note that gives an explanation for

the character in the short story called Jonathan Trout:

C, 340. Jonathan Trout: il a pour modèle Frederick Valentine Waters,

le mari d’Agnes, la sœur aînée d’Annie Beauchamp. Le nom du per-
sonnage est encore un nom familial, appartenant, comme de juste,
à une ‘branche rapportée’. Un missionnaire baptiste du nom de
Trout avait épousé en 1814 une demoiselle Burnell de Plymouth,
grand-tante d’Annie Beauchamp.
[Jonathan Trout: this character’s model is Frederick Valentine Waters,
the husband of Agnes, older sister of Annie Beauchamp [Mansfield’s
mother]. The name of the character is also a family name, belonging
appropriately to an ‘added-on branch’. In 1814 a Baptist mission-
ary called Trout had married a Miss Burnell of Plymouth, Annie
Beauchamp’s great aunt.]

On occasion the translator’s note seems only tangentially related to the

short story, as if the translator wanted to take every opportunity to link
the story to Mansfield’s biography. An example is where it is mentioned
that the character Mrs Kember smokes, and the translator adds a note
about Mansfield’s smoking habit (C 342).
Very often the translator’s notes feature passages from Mansfield’s
other writings: extracts from Mansfield’s Letters and Journal serve to link
the short story ‘At the Bay’ with autobiographical events and people; the
short story is linked to draft passages in the Journal; and links are given
between ‘At the Bay’ and Mansfield’s earlier fictional writings (‘Prelude’,
The Aloe). The translator thus enhances textual memory, since memory
of an earlier text is embedded in the present one through citation and
comment. Here is a note citing a ‘pre-text’ from Mansfield’s Journal:

C 339. En décembre 1920, Katherine Mansfield avait esquissé cette

scène, sous le titre ‘At the Bay’: ‘Le chien de garde sort de sa niche
en traînant la lourde chaîne et lape, lape l’eau froide dans le plat
de fonte. Le chat de la maison émerge on ne sait d’où et saute sur
le rebord de la fenêtre de la cuisine, pour attendre la flaque de lait
répandu, matinal et tiède’
[In December 1920 Katherine Mansfield had sketched this scene with
the title ‘At the Bay’: ‘The house-dog comes out of his kennel drag-
ging the heavy chain and kalop-kalops at the water standing cold
in the iron pan. The house cat emerges from nowhere and bounds
 Personal Memory 33

on to the kitchen window sill waiting for her spill of warm morning
milk’]

In the interview Mme Pellan explained why she considered the notes
related to Mansfield and her work particularly important for the reader-
ship:

Ces notes enrichissent la lecture, et on rentre un peu dans l’intimité

du travail de l’auteur, le côté autobiographique de son écriture, mais
évidemment aussi les transformations à partir de l’expérience réelle.

[These notes enrich reading of the text; it’s possible to gain access
to the inner workings of the author’s writing process, the autobio-
graphical side of her writing, and of course also the transformations
of real-life experience.]

With regard to other texts that the translator could have referred to and
used, the first 1929 French translation of ‘At the Bay’ is of note. However,
Mme Pellan said that referring to an earlier translation is not part of her
practice. She said that she did not wish to be influenced by another
translation, and it might have impeded her:

Traduire, c’est soi devant un texte. S’il y avait un autre texte à côté,
et si en plus on se disait ‘moi je ne le comprends pas comme ça’, il
me semble que ça compliquerait beaucoup la tâche. On ne serait pas
libre, pas spontanée.

[Translating is yourself with a text. If there was another text as

well, and if you were saying ‘that’s not how I understand it’, I
think that would complicate the task greatly. You wouldn’t be free,
spontaneous.]

Memory Distributed across Agents and Social Groups

The translator interacts with others in the micro-context of produc-
tion of the translation, and this publishing context relates to memorial
norms and practices. The power relations between translator and edi-
tor, for example, are part of the established practices of the publishing
institution. Mme Pellan explained that she was invited to translate The
Garden Party by the series editor of Folio Classique, a series from the pub-
lishing house Gallimard. The series editor had appreciated her previous
translation of To the Lighthouse and wished to have The Garden Party and
Other Stories in his series. He told Mme Pellan that he had read Mansfield
34 Mapping Memory in Translation

in English, that he would like to have this short story collection in his
catalogue, and that it was time a new translation was done. But Mme
Pellan does not think he had considered the quality of the first transla-
tion of the work published by Stock. The series editor gave Mme Pellan
guidance concerning the critical apparatus that she was to produce in
conformity with the norms of the Folio Classique series.
Choices made in the translation of a text depend on the transla-
tor’s knowledge and experience. Personal memory is, however, never
really individual (Halbwachs 1952 [1925]). The translator has absorbed
attitudes and normative practices from various social groups in the com-
munity to which he or she belongs, and these norms are part of the
groups’ memory. Norms and preferences for how translation should be
done are built up over time and are a group memorial phenomenon,
thus Mme Pellan’s goals in undertaking translations are not only indi-
vidual. Prior to undertaking the translation, the series editor did not give
Mme Pellan any instructions as to how the translation should be done.
However, it is likely that the preferences and exigencies of the teaching
institution noted earlier (‘a high level of accuracy and care in repre-
senting the source text in translation’) are also the preferences of the
publishing house. In other words, a social nexus supporting normative
notions influences the translation in a largely unspoken manner.
Further individual agents were involved in influencing the translation
text. Mme Pellan recounted that in accordance with her goal to convey
the semantic nuances of Mansfield’s text accurately, when she encoun-
tered phrases whose meaning seemed unclear to her, she consulted a col-
league who was a native speaker of English. She sent her colleague lists
of queries by email. In this way Mme Pellan tapped into the semantic
and procedural memory of a colleague. For some queries the colleague
was quite sure on the choice of interpretation, but in other cases not.
With regard to the publishing house, an agent who had some influence
on the translation was the copy editor. The copy editor proposed some
spelling changes in conformity with the norms of the publishing house.
The only area where the copy editor’s influence was significant was the
notes: Mme Pellan was enjoined to reduce both the quantity of notes
and the length of the notes she had submitted. The policy of the Folio
Classique series is that there should be factual notes that compensate
for the potential lack of knowledge of French-language readers. Notes of
this kind that Mme Pellan provided were accepted. However, as already
mentioned, the kind of note that Mme Pellan was particularly keen on
providing incorporated biographical explanations and citations of other
Mansfield writings. Much to Mme Pellan’s disappointment, a number of
 Personal Memory 35

these notes were shortened and some deleted; the original text of the
notes was reduced by about one fifth. The copy editor had to make sure
that the book complied with the norms of the series, and there was to
be a fixed maximum number of pages. As Mme Pellan commented, the
series editor also has to bow to constraints:

Le directeur de la collection est un fin littéraire, professeur et grand

spécialiste de Proust, mais il est tenu lui-même par les normes de la
maison.
[The series editor has a great knowledge of literature, he’s a professor
and well-known specialist on Proust, but he himself is constrained by
the norms of the publishing house.]

The final approval for publication of the book contents – the title of the
work, the translation and the critical apparatus – was given by the series
editor. The whole set-up of normative procedures, book publication
rules and normative interpersonal relations in the publishing context
has been established over years and the translator as agent therefore
interacts with other agents in a social memorial context.

Cultural Memory and Readership

An important group of people in the social context of interaction is
the readership. The readership is of course kept in mind during transla-
tion; for example, their assumed level of knowledge influenced Mme
Pellan’s critical apparatus. Part of a translator’s competence is expert
knowledge of the collective cultural memory of both source and target
contexts: the complex cultural storehouses of publicly available sym-
bols, rituals, representations, narratives and cultural meanings that may
be partially shared or quite different for source and target audiences. As a
bicultural person, the translator may make the decision to compensate
for perceived differences in cultural memory between source and target
readership groups by adding explanations. Mme Pellan added notes to
explain culture-specific items such as New Zealand and Australian cul-
tural items, botanical references, geographical references and linguistic
expressions. Here is an example:

C 344. Pawa ou paua: mot maori désignant un mollusque comestible

à coquille iridescente proche de l’ormeau.

[Maori word designating an edible mollusc with an iridescent shell

similar to the abalone]
36 Mapping Memory in Translation

With regard to Mansfield’s source-text readership, it should be said

that this shell is very well known to Australasian readers, and certainly
evokes cultural resonances linked to Maori tradition and how the shell is
used in traditional Maori artefacts. Other English-language readers will
be less well informed. Thus, ‘cultural memories’ of ‘source’ and ‘target’
readers are rather gross categories, since in reality they encompass much
diversity. One may also wonder to what extent compensation for com-
plex networks of cultural meanings is possible; Mme Pellan’s note about
pawa provides a basic understanding of the foreign word, and acts as an
invitation to the reader to enter further into the world of the short story.
Mme Pellan recounted that after publication of the book, she received
feedback from readers who had written to Gallimard or the University of
Burgundy to say that they had appreciated reading the short stories and
had found the critical apparatus useful. There were favourable reviews
in Swiss, Belgian and French newspapers; discussion was about the art
of Katherine Mansfield, and rarely was specific mention made of trans-
lation. But of course, Mansfield’s art about which the critics were talking
was the art as conveyed by the translator. It is likely that readers’ prefer-
ences regarding translation fit with both those of the publisher and the
translator mentioned earlier, thus creating normative consensus among
human agents and institutions. This is the memory of the definition of
what an acceptable literary translation is, a definition built up but also
transforming over time in conjunction with present social and literary
circumstances.

Some Non-Organic Elements in Memory Distribution

Materiality and technology are also part of the translator’s agential
and memorial working context: books and computers are repositories
of individually and socially constructed memory, which the translator
draws on and which have an impact on the translator’s work. Pen and
paper serve to record our ideas for later reference, thus writing is an
external memory tool. The computer also provides tools that supple-
ment human skills. It is interesting, then, to consider to what extent
non-human agency participates in the distribution of memory; to what
extent media are an ‘extension of man’, as Marshall McLuhan (1964)
said, with regard to translation activity.
For translating The Garden Party, Mme Pellan recounted that she had
recourse to a number of reference works: English dictionaries, French
dictionaries, English grammar books, French grammar books, the Ency-
clopedia Universalis and the King James Bible. She did not use any
internet resources. The process of producing the translation consisted
 Personal Memory 37

of three main stages. Mme Pellan did the initial draft translation with
pen and paper, and the second lengthy stage of revising, checking and
polishing was also done with pen and paper. The third stage consisted
of typing the translation on the computer to produce an electronic ver-
sion; in the course of typing up the translation she made a few further
changes to the text. Despite only using the computer at a late stage,
Mme Pellan acknowledges the great usefulness for translators of word-
processing features such as ‘cut and paste’, as well as ‘find’, which allows
the translator to check how he or she had previously translated words
and phrases that are repeated later in the text.
The medial ‘extension of woman’ in this case is particularly in the
form of reference books that contain memory of the languages and
encyclopaedic knowledge, and thus complement the translator’s own
personal memory. Pen and paper are a material extension, and the com-
puter has an important role too, in that word-processing features may
help the translator to achieve the goal of producing an ‘ideal transla-
tion’. The ‘find’ function allows the translator to check on aspects of
the translation with which human memory would not be able to cope;
generally our minds are not able to retain the exact points of a long
text at which particular expressions re-occur. Computer memory thus
enhances human memory. However, as will be explored in the next
chapter, computer memory is generally of limited use in literary transla-
tion as compared with non-literary translation, due to the high level of
creative use of language in literary texts.
A range of different modes and agents of memory has contributed to
producing the translation. As a final word in this section, it should be
said that Mme Pellan’s 2002 translation of ‘At the Bay’ has served to
deepen the understanding and enriched the memory of Mansfield and
her writing in the French-speaking cultural sphere. It is a useful addition
to or replacement of the first 1929 translation, which is sometimes less
careful in its translation of detail and has no didactic function, as it
is not a critical edition. Having focused on the translator of one short
story, let us now look more closely at the translations of the two short
stories.

Literary Memorial Co-constructions

As mentioned in Chapter 1, Deane-Cox (2013) has elaborated the idea

of the translator as a ‘secondary witness’. The concept of ‘secondary
witness’ from the field of Holocaust memory studies refers to a person
who listens to a Holocaust survivor’s oral testimony with empathy and
38 Mapping Memory in Translation

helps to record, store and transmit that memory (Deane-Cox 2013, 310).
Deane-Cox conceives the interlingual translator of Holocaust memoir
texts as also being a secondary witness. She enjoins the translator of
Holocaust memoirs to pay careful attention to the expression of trau-
matic experience apparent in the text, such as particular emphases and
specific choices of words, since according to Deane-Cox the translator’s
ethical duty is to preserve and transmit the nuances of the survivor’s
memorial account. The notion of the translator as ‘secondary witness’,
as being a guardian of the ‘contours of memory’ (Deane-Cox 2013,
322), could also be applied to other types of memorial account such as
Mansfield’s autobiographically based short stories. In evaluating French
translations of Mansfield’s short stories, Gerri Kimber finds that, with
the exception of Charles Mauron’s translation (1939) of the collection
In a German Pension, ‘successful translations of Mansfield’s fiction which
would accurately reveal both her artistry and her personal philosophy
have yet to be written’ (2008, 179). So, according to Kimber, it seems
that Mansfield’s translators may have generally been poor secondary
witnesses.
However, earlier I pointed out the difference between memory as a
set of neurocognitive traces; the experience of recall; and representation
of memory in various modes such as written or oral accounts. I argued
in the first part of the case study that Mansfield’s writing style seems to
imitate features of memory structure and recall experience. However,
as a representation it cannot be exactly the same as memory recall.
The choice of words to describe a mental memory image inevitably
highlights aspects of the image at the expense of others, and words
may bring with them meaning associations that were not part of the
original memory impression (Cubitt 2007, 97). Representations neces-
sarily exclude memorial elements and may even obstruct memories. This
thinking is commonly adopted by psychoanalysts; Freud famously elab-
orated the concept of ‘screen memories’, whereby childhood memories
are ‘screened’ by images in accounts that have analogies with the orig-
inal event but also disguise it (Whitehead 2009, 91). If we say that the
translator as secondary witness should be a guardian of memory or recall
(as distinct from representation), the act of guardianship may well entail
attention/faithfulness to what is not said in the original text.
In my approach I will take up the Freudian notion that linguistic slips
in an account can be revealing in terms of unspoken memorial elements
(Whitehead 2009, 89), thus apparent miscomprehensions or shifts in
meaning or style in the translations are potentially useful. Rather than
the notion of guardianship, I would like to emphasize the secondary
 Personal Memory 39

witness’s role as co-constructor of the account: the secondary witness as

listener, receiver and facilitator is a necessary and active figure in the
construction of the memorial account (Deane-Cox 2013, 311). What
occurs is a kind of shared witnessing. In the same way we can conceive
of author and translator as co-constructors of the past created in the
literary depiction; from this point of view the source text and transla-
tion jointly construct textual meanings. A translation theorist who has
explored the notion of jointly reading source and target texts of a liter-
ary work is Marilyn Gaddis Rose (1997). Rose promotes the combined
study of original text and translation, because the study of these closely
related texts enriches understanding of the literary work through the
meanings and resonances evoked in the ‘interliminal’ space between
the texts. As she says (1997, 7): ‘this interliminality is the gift translation
gives to readers of literature’.
I have at my disposal two French translations of each short story, ‘Pre-
lude’ and ‘At the Bay’ (Mansfield 1992 [1936], 2002, 2006a, b). This is
useful, since in some cases it is the contrast between the two French
translations of a story that is revealing. I focus specifically on the evolv-
ing feelings of a central character in the two stories, Linda Burnell, who
is based on Mansfield’s mother, Annie Beauchamp (née Burnell Dyer).
With regard to Mansfield’s depiction of her mother in the short sto-
ries, some basic features seem to accord with autobiographical factuality:
Mansfield biographer Anthony Alpers writes that Annie Beauchamp
did not ‘handle babies’, who were looked after by the grandmother,
Mrs Dyer, and the household of servants; he notes that Annie was the
‘the delicate wife of a hearty husband’ and that, according to sources,
she had little affection for the young Katherine (Alpers 1980, 3, 9,
13). In later life, Annie Beauchamp certainly disapproved of the adult
Katherine’s bohemian ways and cut her daughter out of her will. How-
ever, both parties seem to have mellowed as time went on, when the
rebellious Katherine became nostalgic for her New Zealand past (Alpers
1980, 94). Through memorial and literary reconstruction, Mansfield has
endowed the mother character with a singular sign of ambivalence, in
particular ambivalence in feelings towards her husband and her chil-
dren. The two stories happen at different chronological times, ‘Prelude’
taking place earlier. This is easily divined by the fact that in ‘Prelude’
Linda Burnell, the mother figure, has three children, three girls, whereas
in ‘At the Bay’ she also has a new baby boy. With regard to ambiva-
lence, there is a different focus in each story: it is ambivalence towards
her husband that comes to the fore in ‘Prelude’, whereas ambivalence
towards her children is more prominent in ‘At the Bay’. There is also
40 Mapping Memory in Translation

a development in Linda’s feelings from the first to the second story. A

co-constructive study combines the conceptions of author (which I have
just described briefly) and translators, comparing the French renderings
of particular words, phrases and sentences in the two translations with
each other and with the original English text.

Co-constructive Examples
Whether choices of expression were deliberate or not, there are various
types of case where Mansfield and the French translators can be said
to co-construct features of the memorial mother character’s behaviour
and feelings. The choice of a more banal or standard French expression
may highlight the unusualness and particular connotations of the cor-
responding English expression that convey complexity of feelings. This
occurs with respect to Linda’s ambivalence towards her husband, Stanley
Burnell. In the following passage, ‘curled her fingers into the hand’ is a
very unusual expression in English that evokes an action of much less
decisiveness than the much more standard French expression for which
a back-translation would be ‘thrust her fingers into the big red hand’:

Prelude 46. This is a wretched time for you, old boy, she [Linda] said.
Her cheeks were very white, but she smiled and curled her fingers
into the big red hand she held. Burnell became quiet.

A3 28. C’est un moment pénible [B 28 un vilain moment] pour toi,

mon chéri, dit-elle. Ses joues étaient pâles, mais elle sourit et enfonça
ses doigts dans la grosse main rouge qu’elle tenait. Burnell se
calma.

A less common situation is where it is the English expression that is

unmarked, whereas the French is marked. The unusual French expres-
sion draws attention to the significant banality of the original, as in the
following:

Prelude 60. I’m so confoundedly happy, he [Stanley] said.

‘Are you?’ She [Linda] turned and put her hands on his breast and
looked up at him.

A 45/B 47. Je suis si ridiculement heureux! dit-il.

L’es-tu? Elle se retourna, posa ses mains sur la poitrine de Burnell et
leva les yeux sur lui.

In this extract the common English question tag takes on a particu-

lar significance in the light of the more unusual and intense French
 Personal Memory 41

‘l’es-tu?’ Stanley’s simple and straightforward feelings are contrasted

with Linda’s much more complex, self-questioning sentiments.
Another type of case is where different renderings of words or phrases
in the two translations serve to highlight the ambiguity or ambivalence
of the expression in the original text. An example is the word ‘dear’.
The English word is ambiguous as to the level of strength of affection
expressed. In one use of the term as a vocative in ‘At the Bay’ (90), the
first translation is ‘mon ami’ [my friend] (B 246) and the second ‘mon
chéri’ [my darling] (C 52). A more interesting and extreme case of ambi-
guity occurs with the expression ‘oh, dear!’ Stanley has just returned
home from work in the evening and is covering Linda’s face in kisses.
Linda is not fond of the way Stanley is all over her like a puppy:

Prelude 59. ‘Oh, dear! Oh, dear!’ said she. ‘Wait a moment [ . . . ]
A 44. Oh! chéri! chéri!, dit-elle, attends un instant [ . . . ]
B 46. Oh! là, là! chéri, dit-elle; attends un instant [ . . . ]

The second French translation expresses the potential for ambiguity of

the original expression, which conveys Linda’s ambiguity of feeling.
‘Oh dear!’ can be a slightly negative expression of worry or upset, or the
‘dear’ can be the vocative of affection. The second French translation
opts for both: ‘Oh dear! darling’ (back-translation).
The co-constructive space of possibilities created by the juxtaposition
of original and translations can make the reader of the original aware
of potential secondary meanings of which he/she would not otherwise
have been aware, and in our case can reinforce the sign of ambivalence
under which Linda is portrayed. Linda imagines that things (they) come
alive:

Prelude 51. They listened, they seemed to swell out with some
mysterious important content

A 35/B 35. Ils écoutaient, ils semblaient s’enfler de quelque contente-

ment mystérieux et important

As a native speaker of English, my only interpretation of ‘content’, given

the collocation ‘important content’, would have been ‘that which it
contains’. The French translation of ‘content’ to mean happiness, nor-
mally considered a mistranslation, alerts one to this possible semantic
resonance. Swelling evokes a central symbol in ‘Prelude’, the aloe plant,4
described as a ‘fat swelling plant’ (56), which further calls forth the
notions of fertility and pregnancy. The double attitudinal valency of
‘content’ as neutral (or slightly negative and frightening in the context)
42 Mapping Memory in Translation

and as positive therefore could link to Linda’s ambivalence towards

motherhood. Thus, a linguistic slip may be useful in constructing access
to a richer memorial conception of the character.
There is one scene in ‘Prelude’ in which Linda’s ambivalence towards
her husband is the most explicitly expressed. It is night; Linda and
her mother go into the garden to look at the aloe plant. It is a very
large, strong plant growing on a grass ‘island’ on the drive leading up
to the house. The plant has ‘thick grey-green thorny leaves’ with a ‘tall
stout stem’ (56) in the middle. The plant represents femininity through
its fleshiness, and also strength and independence through its strong
tallness and the spikes that border the leaves; it represents a healing
life-symbol and liberation. The scene is bathed in mystical bright moon-
light. Linda imagines that the aloe is a ship on which she is escaping;
the thorns will deter anyone from following her. At this moment she
has a stark realization of the ambivalence of her feelings towards her
husband: she both loves and hates him. There are several cases where
the co-construction enacted by the group of texts underscores the char-
acter’s struggle with her sentiments. In the first half of the scene in
Mansfield’s text the actual name of Linda’s husband, Stanley, is not men-
tioned. Instead, he is referred to as ‘my Newfoundland dog’ (72) and by
pronouns ‘he’ and ‘him’. The dog metaphor is continued with refer-
ence to him barking and jumping at her, which she dislikes. The lack of
name mention includes the moment of epiphany. In one of the French
translations of that sentence, however, the name occurs. This makes one
wonder about its absence in the English for the whole passage; it seems
to display Linda’s difficulty in admitting and facing up to her feelings
towards her husband.

Prelude 72. For all her love and respect and admiration she hated
him.

A 61. Avec tout son amour, son respect et son admiration pour lui,
elle le détestait.

B 65. Avec tout son amour, son respect et son admiration pour
Stanley, elle le détestait.

A central scene with regard to Linda’s feelings towards motherhood

occurs in ‘At the Bay’ when Linda is sitting on a chaise longue under a
yellow-flowering manuka tree. Sleeping beside her on the grass between
two pillows is her baby boy. Linda daydreams about her girlhood and
her close relationship to her father, then reflects on her life now: her
 Personal Memory 43

marriage to Stanley whom she loves but who is also a burden. Her main
grudge is that she is ‘broken, made weak’ through child-bearing; she
lives in ‘dread of having children’ (Bay 98). The French rendering of
‘dread’ as ‘la terreur’ (B 259/C 68) adds a greater strength of feeling and
additional connotations. In the subsequent passage, there is an unusual
syntactical arrangement in the English; the comma after ‘was’ seems to
represent a hiccup, a pause where Linda has some difficulty in thinking
what comes next. The French translations, in contrast, present normal-
ized smooth syntax. The co-construction of odd and smooth in the
ensemble of versions mirrors the unclarity of Linda’s feelings; indeed,
shortly after the admission in the following, she confesses a tinge of
affection towards the baby boy:

Bay 98. And what made it doubly hard to bear was, she didn’t love
her children.

B 259. Et, ce qui rendait la chose deux fois plus dure à supporter,
c’était qu’elle n’aimait pas ses enfants.

C 68. Et ce qui rendait la chose doublement difficile à supporter, c’est

qu’elle n’aimait pas ses enfants.
[What made the thing doubly hard to bear was that she didn’t love
her children.]

Linda displays a general ambivalence to life, and it is the combined

play of original and translations that can further point this up and
prompt interesting reflections. Linda’s psyche seems to be closely linked
to nature. The aloe is described as being ‘high above them, as though
becalmed in the air’ (Prelude 56). In translation A this becomes ‘bien
au-dessus d’elles, comme à l’abri de l’atmosphère’ (41), and in transla-
tion B ‘calme et haute, baignant dans l’atmosphère’ (43). The different
French senses of ‘sheltering from’ (A) and ‘bathing in’ (B) the atmo-
sphere evoke Linda’s simultaneous fearfulness and confidence with
regard to life.
‘Prelude’ brings no resolution to Linda’s internal turmoil. In this story
Linda is shown to be constantly aware of imprisonment within a life
that she partly wants and partly rejects (Fulbrook 1986, 77). In ‘Prelude’,
as Hankin (1983, 135) says: ‘for the dilemma of the emotionally ambiva-
lent women whose social destiny is marriage, Katherine Mansfield can
provide no answer’. As the chronologically later story, it could be
expected that some sort of resolution might occur in ‘At the Bay’.
Indeed, an answer in the way of a philosophy of life is provided near
44 Mapping Memory in Translation

the beginning of this story through reflections of the character Jonathan

Trout, Linda’s brother-in-law (88). Again, nature is of prime symbolic
importance, specifically the sea, which is depicted as an immense rock-
ing expanse. Jonathan has been bathing in the sea and it is the breaking
of the waves on the shore that inspires his idea that just as the sea comes
and goes, so must we accept and not fight against the ebb and flow
of life.
In the early part of ‘At the Bay’ Linda does not yet come to any proper
realization of Jonathan’s philosophy. She is still struggling, and this is
conveyed in the scene when she is sitting on the chaise longue under
the manuka tree. She feels that she is a victim of life:

Bay 97. Along came Life like a wind and she was seized and shaken;
she had to go.

B 258. La Vie s’en venait pareille au vent; elle était saisie, secouée; elle
était forcée de fuir.

C 67. La Vie faisait irruption comme un coup de vent, s’emparait

d’elle et la secouait; il fallait y aller.

The differing translations of ‘she had to go’ explicitly construct Linda’s

undecided emotions: is she fleeing from life (first translation) or is she
being carried along by life (second translation)?
Finally, during Jonathan Trout’s visit to Linda, there is a moment
when she seems to be at ease, she accepts her life and the ebb and
flow of its ambivalence. The sun is setting and there are silver beams
of light shining through the clouds. Linda reflects on how sometimes
the beams of light were terrible to her as they reminded her of God as a
terrifying and vengeful Almighty. But tonight she feels a positive force
in the beams:

Bay 111. to-night it seemed to Linda there was something infinitely

joyful and loving in those silver beams. And now no sound came
from the sea. It breathed softly as if it would draw that tender, joyful
beauty into its own bosom.

B 279. ce soir-là, il semblait à Linda qu’il y avait quelque chose

d’infiniment joyeux et tendre dans ces rayons d’argent. Aucun bruit
maintenant ne venait de la mer. Elle respirait doucement, comme
si elle eût voulu attirer dans son sein toute cette beauté tendre et
joyeuse.
 Personal Memory 45

C 93. ce soir, les rayons d’argent avaient pour Linda quelque chose
d’infiniment joyeux et aimant. Et plus aucun bruit ne parvenait de la
mer. Elle respirait doucement comme si elle voulait absorber en son
sein cette beauté tendre et joyeuse.

The sea is a multiple signifier representing life (birth) and death (destruc-
tion), beauty and terror, timelessness, a unifying force, women; and
the reference to the sea naturally recalls Jonathan Trout’s philosophy
inspired by the breaking waves on the sea shore. The third sentence
in English is noticeably anthropomorphic, with the sea being said to
breathe and having a bosom. In French ‘it’ becomes ‘elle’ due to the fem-
inine gender of ‘la mer’, the sea. Since ‘elle’ equally can mean ‘she’, this
sentence could be referring either to the sea or to Linda; indeed, because
of the anthropomorphism the French reader may take ‘elle’ to refer to
Linda. In addition, the word for ‘sea’ in French, ‘mer’, is homophonic
with ‘mère’, meaning ‘mother’. The confounding of Linda with the sea
in our co-constructed reading signals that Linda is at one with nature
and the complexities of life. This message is beautifully displayed in the
bilingual textual play, thus affording readers of the ensemble of texts
a particular insight into the character’s experience. Mansfield specialist
Hankin provides a similar interpretation about the themes of ‘At the
Bay’. In a story that depicts how humans are divided between a long-
ing to explore the dimensions of life and a fear to leave the known and
familiar, between aspiration to freedom from family ties yet emotional
dependence on them, Mansfield provides an answer of acceptance of
these dualisms that is symbolized by a mysterious unity of the natural
and human orders (Hankin 1983, 233).
Overall the textual co-construction is shown to underline the cen-
tral quality of ambivalence of feeling of the mother character, which is
the distillation of Mansfield’s memorial/literary conception. Reading the
translations, which display variations and sometimes perceived short-
comings, in conjunction with the original texts brings to light subtleties
of characterization and themes, and thus may reveal what Mansfield was
trying to do according to Hanson and Gurr; that is, to write the ‘finer
sort of memory which can best discover the ideal essence of experience,
obscured in the confusion of immediate impressions and perceptions’
(Hanson & Gurr 1981, 16). Of course, it has to be acknowledged that
co-construction involves not only author and translators, but impor-
tantly readers of these texts, including myself. Just as in the stories
Mansfield reconstructed her past, often in order to provide meaning-
ful insights on life, readers constantly reconstruct the author’s original
46 Mapping Memory in Translation

works and translations through their interpretations. The study has

shown that adopting a co-constructive approach through reading (mul-
tiple) translated versions of a literary text in conjunction with the source
text as a textual ensemble can contribute to enriching interpretation of
the memorial reconstructions of the work(s).

Adopting a memory approach in this case study has allowed us to inves-

tigate analogies between the author’s writing style and autobiographical
memorial recall; to trace the role of the translator’s personal memory as
well as distributed memory in the production of a translation; and to
highlight the enhancement of meanings produced by reading the co-
constructive ensemble of source text and translations. The translations
participate in the reiterative nature of memory and products of mem-
ory. As Astrid Erll (2009, 111) says, events, people and cultural products
(such as Katherine Mansfield and her stories) only remain in cultural
memory through repeated representations over time, often in different
genres, media and languages. The translations as well as other writ-
ings, including this chapter itself, produce new versions and renewed
understandings of Mansfield and her works such that the memory of
the stories and their author is propelled forwards in time.
3
Group Memory and Electronic
Memory

The two types of memory that are the focus of this chapter are group
memory and electronic memory. A scholar whom we have already
mentioned, Maurice Halbwachs, is a major figure with regard to the
concept of group memory. In the early twentieth century Halbwachs
(1952 [1925]) theorized convincingly the social aspect of memory: soci-
ety is made up of groups and each social group can be thought of
as consisting of a number of members who share memory involving
past events as well as normative thinking and habitual current prac-
tices that have developed over time. It was Halbwachs who coined the
term ‘collective memory’ (‘mémoire collective’). The main groups with
which Halbwachs was concerned were family, religious group, profes-
sional group and social class group, but the term ‘collective memory’
can also be applied to larger groups, notably the nation-state. Some the-
orists warn about extrapolating the concept ‘memory’ (which originally
concerned the individual’s brain) to a social group in an over-simplistic
manner. Particular worries are using psychoanalytic terminology to
characterize a group, and reifying group memory as an abstract faculty,
a fixed thing or a social fact. Even if members of society reify memory,
according to Olick (2003, 6) the researcher should avoid this conception
and, through recognizing the fluid, processual nature of memory, treat it
as ‘mnemonic practices’, ideological projects and practices of people in
particular settings. Similarly, Cubitt (2007, 18) conceptualizes memory
as a matter of continuous interactive exchanges within the group that
over time produce effects in human consciousness. For the purposes of
this study, I prefer to combine the concepts of thing and process in the
idea that at certain points in time we can speak of knowledge, beliefs and
attitudes constituting memory that are constructed through processes
and are subject to ongoing processes and change.

47
48 Mapping Memory in Translation

A group is made up of individuals, and the relationship between

individual and social group is dialectical: the social group memory
consisting of knowledge of the past, norms, practices and attitudes influ-
ences the individual’s thinking and actions (Halbwachs 1952 [1925]),
and the individual for his or her part interacting with other individuals
contributes to the maintenance and development of that group memory
through reuse and modified enactment of the group norms. Individuals
belong in fact to many different social groups. One reason for modifi-
cation in a particular group memory of the past and memorial practices
is contact with alternative ideas due to the multiplicity of groups with
which individual group members associate. It should also be noted that
social groups today are not so bounded and fixed as in Halbwachs’s
time: a large amount of migrational and touristic movement as well
as worldwide connection through electronic means has led to poten-
tially greater flexibility of groups in both membership constitution and
thought patterns. Group memory and knowledge are passed on to the
new generation and across generations not only through verbal inter-
action, but also by means of memorial externalization such as rituals,
objects, monuments and official documents. Various types of organi-
zational structures such as meeting places also play a role in memory
transmission (Cubitt 2007, 120).
In our context we are concerned with groups of translators who are
linked together by evolving group memory of shared ideas relating
to shared practices. Although the professional translator may often be
thought of as a fairly isolated individual, this is in fact far from being
the case. Translators across the ages have been associated in more or
less tightly connected groups. There are famous historical examples
of collaborative translation, even ‘schools’ of translation. In the early
centuries of the common era Buddhist scriptures were translated from
Sanskrit into classical Chinese by teams of foreign and Chinese monk
translators. In the ninth and tenth centuries Baghdad was a hugely
ambitious centre of translation and numerous Greek scientific and
philosophical texts were translated into Arabic; then in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries Toledo became a prolific centre of translation where
the Graeco-Arabic scientific and philosophical heritage was transmitted
by means of translation into Latin and Spanish. In both Baghdad and
Toledo collaborative translation was practised, either by tandem teams
or in the mode of a principal translator with anonymous assistants
(Delisle & Woodsworth 1995, 120, 126, 185). Contemporary technolo-
gies have created extraordinary possibilities for collaborative translation:
collaborative translation platforms in a cloud-based environment allow
 Group Memory and Electronic Memory 49

project managers, translators and proofreaders to log in to the same sys-

tem at the same time, sharing electronic resources and communicating
via platform communication features. Real-time communication and
simultaneous working of all parties shorten the life cycle of the project
(Kelly et al. 2011). Considering translation as a group phenomenon
does not necessarily entail the idea of two or more translators working
on the same translation. It can mean, among other things, translators
working for a common company or agency; professional associations
or networks of translators; translators following shared social norms
of a certain place and era regarding translation (see Toury 1995); or a
sub-group of translators identifying with a particular specialization or
ideology.
Some groupings of translators are formal, such as in-house translators
working for a business or organization. An example of the more formal
type of group, translators of the Directorate General for Translation at
the European Commission, will be examined in Chapter 7. Many other
groups are fairly informal, and examples of such groups are the focus of
this chapter. With regard to informal groups, a relevant notion is that of
‘community of practice’. This notion, first proposed by Etienne Wenger,
places emphasis on the idea that informal communities may be created
based on regular interaction and shared practices. Mutual engagement
in the form of interaction in discussion and in the activities of a joint
enterprise as understood and continually renegotiated by members cre-
ates a social entity. There are no fixed boundaries of the community of
practice: membership comprises whoever participates in and contributes
to practice, and people may participate in different ways and to differ-
ent degrees. Collective learning from the experience of discussion and
activities produces a shared repertoire of practices, knowledge and com-
munal resources (attitudes, approaches, routines, artefacts, vocabulary,
styles etc.) that members have developed over time. Communities are of
course affected by evolving outside circumstances and constraints: since
members develop practices that reflect their own response to these exter-
nal influences, these are fundamentally self-organizing systems (Wenger
1998). Communities of practice may form among a group of individuals
working within a more formal structure such as a business organiza-
tion, or they may straddle formal structures. Generally the operation of
the community of practice is based on peer-to-peer interaction, which
contrasts with the more hierarchical structure typical of formal institu-
tions. Of course, individuals may identify with multiple communities at
any given time, as well as with other types of social structure (Wenger
2010).
50 Mapping Memory in Translation

A community persists because participation, and the collective pro-

duction of knowledge and practices, is useful and of interest and value
to its members. Various developmental stages of the community from
its creation to its eventual dissolution involve memory. These are the
‘coalescing’ stage, when members build a common understanding of
the community’s aims and principles, and remember this understand-
ing; the ‘active’ stage, when members engage actively in joint activities,
maintaining strong commitment to the group, creating artefacts and
developing shared practices that become a part of communal memory;
the ‘dispersed’ stage, when members no longer engage very intensely,
but the community is still alive as a centre of past and evolving knowl-
edge and practices; and the ‘memorable’ stage, when the community
is no longer active, but is remembered as a significant part of people’s
identities (Wenger 1998).
Most social groups today use electronic means for creating a pub-
lic group presence (such as websites, blogs and social media profiles),
as well as for communication purposes. Electronic memory, which is
a prerequisite for use of software, email and the internet, has become a
fundamental part of contemporary life, and in many professions the use
of electronic tools and resources is now an obligatory feature. Certainly
this is the case for translators. I have already touched on the relationship
between organic and non-organic agency and memory in the previous
chapter, and will now take the discussion further. Although ‘agency’
has often been considered as requiring intentionality, if its meaning
is defined rather as ‘exerting an influence in the world’ (Kinnunen &
Koskinen 2010, 7), then agency can be extended to material objects,
including not only machines and computers but other media such as
books. For Andrew Pickering (1995), humans are entangled with the
non-human, as humans embody their intentionality in the material
in the form of expectations of performance by the machine, which
exerts its own not fully predictable agency. With regard to memory,
van Dijck (2007, 49) argues persuasively that memories are mediated
through functions of body and mind, technology and materiality, and
social practices and forms. Take for example a photograph of a past event
in a person’s life: the person has a memory of the event in their mind,
but the photograph may influence the person’s recall, and photography
is also a socially defined practice that may shape the content and use of
the photograph, and thus the memory as both individual and shared.
In this outlook agency and memory are distributed across mind, media
and society, and thus it is important to examine the role of machines
and electronic memory as part of our study.
 Group Memory and Electronic Memory 51

The case studies in the chapter were chosen because they show two
contrasting types of informal groups of translators that have different
relations to both electronic memory and group memory. I first discuss
an internet-based community of freelance, primarily technical transla-
tors, the proz.com community, focusing on members’ relations with
electronic memory devices. The second group to be examined is liter-
ary translators who identify as feminist or as using feminist translation
strategies. I examine to what extent they link back to the founders and
the early translational strategies of this activist branch of translation
practice.

Proz.commers

Proz.com was founded in 1999. The date is significant, since it was

from the year 2000 that the flexibility and capacity of the internet
expanded greatly. For this community internet technology and thus
electronic memory were founding conditions, such that it could be
designated an electronic community of practice. The proz.com site is
currently the most popular portal in the translation industry, with about
724,000 registered users from around the world. Proz.com has been
built on guiding principles and a mission statement, which constitute
its memorial foundation. The mission of proz.com is to ‘provide tools
and opportunities that translators, translation companies and others
in the language industry use to (1) network (2) expand their business
(3) improve their work and (4) have more fun’ (proz.com). The guiding
principles of the community are enumerated on the website. A ‘collabo-
rative spirit’, ‘camaraderie through working together’, ‘respect, fairness
and professionalism’, ‘results-oriented collaboration for mutual benefit’,
‘customizability of site functions in accordance with individual needs’
and ‘translators being at the heart of a meeting-place for all players in
the translation industry’ are key principles. Another is that the com-
munity is ‘open and welcoming’. Indeed, there are different kinds of
participation and levels of engagement, as befits the loose boundaries of
a community of practice that has a fluid core–periphery type of inter-
nal structure. Participants include salaried employees, paying members
(whose fees finance the group), volunteer moderators, non-paying users
and passing visitors.
The proz.com community engages in a range of activities. As well
as important individual-focused activities (notably, individuals finding
work through the job-posting system), there are a number of collec-
tive activities. These consist of the Kudoz network, in which translators
52 Mapping Memory in Translation

ask questions about problems of translating terminology and phrases,

and other translators reply; conferences, training sessions, powwows
(informal get-togethers of translators living in close proximity); the
Blue Board, where members post feedback on clients for the benefit of
other translators; translation contests; a mentoring programme; a trans-
lation industry wiki constituting a knowledge base; a discussion forum
on issues relevant to translators, such as ‘getting established’ or ‘subti-
tling’; Glosspost, a collectively established set of translation glossaries
and dictionaries; group buying of software to obtain cheaper prices; and
a network of screened translation professionals called proz.com Certi-
fied PRO network (a subset of the wider community). The community
administration has a nifty means for encouraging informal collabora-
tion among members: points are awarded to contributors on the Kudoz
network, and translators are ordered hierarchically in the directory of
freelance translators in accordance with the number of points obtained.
It seems to me that many members also enjoy engaging in spontaneous
collaboration and contact: an examination of the discussion forums
reveals that community members interact a great deal, get to know
each other, share information and opinions, engage in debate with each
other and support novice translators. All the site activity builds a sense
of community and produces a repertoire of practices, knowledge and
communal resources that are archived, storing community memory;
there are, for example, searchable archives of discussion forum posts
and Kudoz questions. One of the community principles is that proz.com
‘believes in reuse’: site users are encouraged to check the archives before
approaching the community for assistance. The community is con-
tinually enhancing its website-based services in response to members’
needs and feedback, and it claims an innovative role in the translation
industry:

Having invented services such as Kudoz, the Blue Board, powwows

and much more, the Proz.com community has already redefined
what it means to be a translator – the profession is more collaborative,
more efficient and more fun than it was before this site existed.

And the site leaders consider that ‘there is much more participants can
do together in the future’ (proz.com). In terms of Wenger’s (1998) com-
munity development stages, proz.com is certainly in the ‘active stage’.

Proz.commers’ Attitudes towards Electronic Memory Devices

What I propose to investigate further with regard to the proz.com com-
munity is the discussion forum function, and in particular community
 Group Memory and Electronic Memory 53

member discussions on the topic of electronic memory devices. Today

electronic tools are generally an indispensable feature of the professional
translator’s work. When we depart from literary translation to con-
sider technical translation, the usefulness of computer memory becomes
salient, since in contrast to literary translation, technical translation
involves a significant level of standardization of lexis and phrases and
their equivalents in other languages, which are repeated and reused
across different texts. This type of language use lends itself to com-
puterized treatment. Translators use CAT (computer-assisted translation)
tools, of which the most universal are translation memory (TM) tools.
A translation memory is a database of previous renderings of phrases
and sentences, which can be built up from translation work undertaken
by an individual translator or a group of translators working together.
When a translator is translating a new text and encounters a phrase
in the source text that is the same or similar to previously translated
phrases, the CAT tool will retrieve the earlier translation for reuse, thus
saving the translator from translating and typing from scratch. Use is
thus made of ‘legacy translations’.
The process using translation memory (TM) is to be distinguished
from machine translation (MT), where typically an entire text is trans-
lated by a computer program and the translator corrects or tidies the
translation subsequently, a process known as ‘post-editing’. A distinc-
tion needs to be made between free online machine translation, which
is often ridiculed for anomalous results, and professional machine
translation systems, which can produce good results due to expert cus-
tomization and use. Statistical machine translation is thus likely to
expand in the coming years. The statistical machine translation process
is based on the statistical likelihood of the source-text sentence being
translated by a particular target-text sentence, and the statistical like-
lihood of the target rendering being considered natural in the target
language. To work out such likelihood, prior analysis of a large electronic
database of original texts in the source language in conjunction with
their corresponding translations in the target language is necessary, as
well as analysis of original texts in the target language. Although statisti-
cal machine translation algorithms were known since the mid-twentieth
century, they were not able to be exploited usefully till the 2000s, since
previously there was not enough electronic data available to work out
the statistical probabilities. The capacity of electronic memory and the
internet today allows huge quantities of electronic texts to be produced,
stored, circulated and manipulated, and thus statistical machine trans-
lation has become a viable prospect. Results are particularly successful
when the input data for statistical analysis and use is customized; that
54 Mapping Memory in Translation

is, it is highly appropriate to the text type and subject matter of the
text being translated. Quality remains variable depending on language
pair. Machine translation results always require revision in order to bring
them to a high-quality standard, but it is certain that in many cases the
combination of machine and human editor is the most useful solution
for some large business translation needs (Byrne & Morgan 2013). It is
even likely that in the future the profession of technical translator may
well be replaced to a large extent by the combination of machine and
human post-editor.
Archived and current discussion forums on proz.com are a most inter-
esting source in order to investigate translators’ attitudes, since they are
an avenue where freelancers freely express their opinions on topics of
interest. The focus in the following is on particular forum discussion
threads that reveal translators’ attitudes towards electronic tools, and
translators’ conceptions of the relationship between organic (human)
memory and electronic (machine) memory. Attitudes and conceptions
are worth studying, since they relate to present and past experience
and shape future action. In order to investigate translators’ experiences
and conceptions of the role of the computer in their work, I studied
35 discussion threads dated between 2001 and 2014 on three proz.com
translators’ forums: ‘Getting Established’ and ‘Translator Resources’ (for
which I entered the key word ‘translation memory’), and ‘Machine
Translation’.
Forum discussions on proz.com about CAT tools provide a wide range
of aspects and opinions concerning the relations between human and
machine, and between human and computer memory. Emphasis is put
on the idea that the human brain and human skills and experience
cannot be entirely replaced if a quality translation is desired:

Nobody would deny that CAT tools can increase the productiv-
ity of one’s translation process. But just owning Trados [a well-
known CAT tool] doesn’t prove one’s capability of translation and
professionalism.

Trados, Wordfast DejaVu, MetaTexis and all the other CAT programs
can help, but at the end of the day, the crucial factors are your spe-
cialist skills and your ability to deliver the product in the format that
the client requires.

At the same time, various hardware and software items are consid-
ered absolutely essential for today’s professional translator, namely a
 Group Memory and Electronic Memory 55

computer, Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat, internet access and email.

With regard to using a CAT tool, many translators consider it ‘an essen-
tial tool of the trade’. However, for translating less repetitive text types
and for creative texts such as advertisements, a CAT tool is of less use,
and there are still a number of professionals calling themselves ‘low-tech
translators’ who do not use translation memory tools. For translating
the relevant types of text many translators mention the advantages of a
CAT tool: it allows the establishment and reuse of a ‘treasure of effective
translation options’; it also permits the use of an integrated termbank;
it saves time and increases productivity; it increases terminological
consistency in the translation; it improves accuracy and precision; it
facilitates revision and updating of translations; and it prevents acci-
dental omissions by the translator through the segmentation function
(the translator works segment by segment). A number of translators refer
to how computer memory very usefully enhances human memory:

[If] you can’t remember how you translated ‘13-teeth double-twisted

nano-sprocket’ about 50 pages ago, the translation memory (TM) will
remember it for you. It’s a very, very nice thing.

[A CAT tool] enables you to mine past work for effective translation
options that would otherwise stay ‘on the tip of your tongue’.
Often I’ll hit a tricky phrase and think ‘I know this has come up in
previous jobs I’ve done!’ With Trados, I can instantly access all the
previous sentences I’ve translated over the years that include that
particular term or phrase.

Some people have photographic memories, and others are very con-
scientious and dutifully note down every word they come across and
enter it in a carefully maintained glossary. I’m not in either category.
And I don’t need to be – because I have Translation Memory.

It would be incorrect to say that humans have a ‘bad memory’; rather,

they have a different type of memory from computers, and thus human
and machine memories are complementary: the extensive mechani-
cal memory of the machine is complemented by the complex creative
memory of the human. As one translator says:

The longer you wait, the more memory will be lost from your brain.
Let machines do what they are better at, and you just have to do what
only humans can do with our flexible brain.
56 Mapping Memory in Translation

Forum contributors also say that the CAT tool is more useful in certain
situations. The first is if it is used over a long period of time so that the
translator has built up the translation memory or memories and likewise
furnished the terminology database(s). The second is if the translator
knows the tool intimately and so can exploit all its potential functions,
making it thus a more flexible tool; such a CAT tool expert is called a
‘power user’ on the forums:

Part of my job as a professional translator is to know the tools I work

with. And the better you get to know them, the more helpful they
become!

As for disadvantages of CAT tools, the tool must be used judiciously,

especially if a translation memory has been supplied by a client, because
certain prior renderings may not be accurate or may not be appropriate
in the specific context of the text at hand. The translator also has to
make sure that working by contained segments of text does not lead to
loss of cohesion of the completed translated text. One contributor to
the forums suggests that some translators may become too dependent
on CAT:

CAT-fanciers often feel uncomfortable when there’s no CAT available

(or a different one)

It is noted that some translators ‘trust’ CAT too much and adopt
CAT suggestions in the translation being done without sufficient reflec-
tion. Here it seems that the ‘tool’ may start becoming the master. Other
disadvantages mentioned are the complexity of certain CAT tools, and
the high price. However, a large number of translators state that the
price is quickly recouped by the increased productivity of the translator,
and other benefits already mentioned make the financial investment
worthwhile.
The question of price brings us into the social domain. There are
now a number of competing CAT tools, ranging from free tools avail-
able online to expensive ones. Forum translators discuss the virtues and
developments of various tools. Most importantly, translation agencies
often require a translator to have a CAT tool, and generally a particular
one, with the most common being Trados. Trados has been known as
the ‘industry standard’, although this status is criticized by a number of
forum translators and other brands are gaining ground. With regard to
work for an agency, if the translator does not have the required tool, he
 Group Memory and Electronic Memory 57

or she probably will not get the job. Thus there is great social pressure
for translators to become CAT equipped. Such issues of ownership of
a CAT tool may soon, however, become a thing of the past, for in the
burgeoning development of cloud-based translation platforms, it is not
necessary for translators to have desktop translation memory applica-
tions, as all resources and tools are available on the platform (Kelly et al.
2011, 85). The advantages of CAT for translation agencies are obvious:
quicker jobs and reduced costs, since lower prices are paid for transla-
tions that include TM matches. The translators on the forums debate
to what extent such ‘discounts’ are fair to translators, but they seem to
have become standard. CAT tools allow the client to provide a transla-
tion memory and/or termbase, which translators consider very useful.
Another interactive advantage of TM is the possibility of sharing the
memory, and thus having a team of translators working on a big job
with consistency in the translation product.
Although some translators express resistance to CAT and fear of
change, most accept the situation of progress from ‘primitive’ media
and tools such as pen and paper to the current CAT tools:

Not too long ago, the dividing line between translators was the use of
a computer for their work, then the use of the Internet [ . . . ] CAT tools
are in my opinion only the next step down the line. And just like all
translators here obviously would agree that they couldn’t do their job
with the same efficiency without computers or the Internet, the num-
ber of people agreeing that they couldn’t do their job as efficiently
without the use of a CAT tool is constantly growing.

Fear becomes a more insistent theme with regard to machine trans-

lation, since if not total replacement, it is affirmed that if machine
translation becomes widespread, there will be less work for human
translators:

Does anybody remember switchboard operators, typing pools? What

happened to sprayers and welders working on cars when robots took
their jobs? There will be less work for translators in the future – it is
only a matter of time, the writing is on the wall . . .

Of course it is recognized that some types of translation, notably creative

and literary translation, are not within the grasp of machine translation,
nor can current MT segment-based technology deal with text-level issues
of cohesion, coherence or tasks such as producing reliable summary
58 Mapping Memory in Translation

translations. However, much of the work of professional translators is

amenable to machine translation.
Another concern expressed is that translators will be downgraded in
status. With machine translation, the main roles of humans are to do
pre-processing (preparing the MT system, machine-friendly input or a
glossary) and post-processing (tidying up the output) using sophisti-
cated programs, thus ‘translators’ become more like technicians. Fur-
thermore, the bulk of the work for foreign-language specialists is in
post-editing the machine output, thus translators are relegated to the
job of MT error repairers. It seems that with TM the human translator is
very much in charge, but that with MT the mode of distributed agency
gives a more dominant role to the machine. One forum contributor who
is not favourable towards machine translation expresses this as follows:

[MT] makes work a lot less rewarding since a machine dictates the
general guidelines of your style and writing. It sounds a bit sad to
become a freelancer thinking that you will be your own boss . . . to
become the servant of a machine translation tool.

In contrast, some translators say that they find MT useful and enjoy
incorporating it in their work. Note the positive but somewhat ironic
comment about ‘being a servant’ in the following:

I have improved the speed of my work with MT without having to

compromise [quality]. I also find integrating MT into my work proce-
dures to be an interesting challenge, which makes the rather routine
translation work I do intellectually more demanding and rewarding.
The texts I translate are technical and require expertise, but provided
you have that expertise, the work is not cognitively taxing at all.
Being a servant of the tool makes it more fun.

Indeed, if ‘fun’ is equated with interest and creativity, there are differ-
ent types of human creativity; one type is dealing with the way in which
technology brokers translation (O’Brien 2012). Furthermore, rather than
perceiving themselves as devalued and dehumanized by technology,
translators may see themselves as being freed from boring, repetitive
tasks, and thus able to take on subtler, more complex tasks:

You can programme a machine to recognize the standard remarks and

reproduce them with similar standard remarks fairly reliably. Then we
can concentrate on areas where humans are really needed.
 Group Memory and Electronic Memory 59

Importantly, as one forum contributor pointed out, it needs to be recog-

nized that ‘post-editing’ is a valuable and demanding occupation since
it requires high-level critical analysis, linguistic knowledge and subject-
matter expertise, as well as judicious judgements as to what level of
correction is needed for a particular translation project.
The human translator may actually have no role at all, if the reader
of the translation is satisfied for his or her purposes with a rough gist
translation. Quality requirements vary according to the commission. If a
quality translation is required using MT, the best results are obtained
through professional enterprise-level MT systems, and customizing and
‘training’ the machine in a ‘controlled environment’ with human post-
editing. Individual translators report a positive experience when they
customize MT, and businesses are successful in communication aims
through customization:

When you buy your own program and customize it into your own
style, it is a very helpful tool.
a highly structured man-machine collaboration environment gives
the enterprise a fighting chance at producing compelling and accu-
rate if not quite human quality in order to communicate with its
global customer base.

The term ‘train’ is interesting, since it normally applies to animate enti-

ties such as animals or humans, and thus equates the machine with
living beings possessing a capacity for understanding. However, because
a human trainer and human input are always needed, MT remains
a collaborator and does not become a total substitute when the best
results are required. In the process of ‘training’, TM and MT can be inte-
grated. The agencies, memories and particular competences of human
and machine collaborate and are intertwined in a circular way in contin-
uous feedback cycles. Here are some aspects of this intertwining. The raw
material for training the machine translation engine is a large amount of
human-controlled texts, including a bilingual electronic corpus, which
may be customized in the form of specific TMs provided for the purpose
of training the MT engine in specific terminology and style; using the
input and statistical analysis a translation is produced by the machine;
a human post-editor tidies up this text; and this post-edited transla-
tion is fed into the memory database to contribute as input for further
machine training. MT-produced raw texts thus become more and more
‘humanized’.
60 Mapping Memory in Translation

One forum translator reports that in training the machine it could

almost become a second ‘you’:

the offline MT environment is a hybrid between a CAT tool and a

‘text prediction’ component. When you use it, you won’t just get a
generic wall of MT generated text, but rather (with time and work) a
text that feels much more like something that you would write, that
would be a lot easier to edit, and that has the potential to increase
your productivity

With regard to the impact of MT on the amount of work for translators,

the negative idea of a decrease in work due to ‘take-over by machines’
is argued against by some forum contributors, who say that there is and
will be an increased overall demand for translation in our globalized
world, and therefore no reduction in work for translators. The needs of
large enterprises are likely to concern various types of text that are best
treated in different ways, for example human translation for marketing,
legal contracts and newsletters; machine translation plus post-editing
for websites, manuals, product descriptions, email support, FAQs and
alerts/notifications; and machine translation only for user reviews, user
forums, wikis and blogs (Byrne & Morgan 2013). This demonstrates a
differentiated, purposeful use of human and machine.
As one translator concludes, technological progress is inevitable
because:

since humans first began crawling around this ball of mud, we have
always searched for ways to make technology improve our lives.

Thus translators need to accept the changing distribution of agency in

the collaboration of translator and machine:

It’s naïve to think MT is not the future and we cannot afford to

close our eyes to progress. It’s only just beginning. The role of
the translator will change gradually from translation to editing of
machine-translated text. [ . . . ] Don’t be scared of the future, embrace
it and with it the new MT tools.

Responding to this comment, another forum contributor predicts that

in the future the job of most translators will be to produce massive
volumes (compared to current standards) of bulk translations, which
will be machine translated with minimal editing by the translator in a
 Group Memory and Electronic Memory 61

‘technology-human tandem’. Already in a 2014 Quick Poll on proz.com,

it appears that nearly 40 per cent of professional translators are making
some use of MT. Overall, from TM to MT, a change is occurring in the
nature of human–computer interaction in producing translations. The
role of the computer with its specific capacities and memory type has
changed and is changing from a tool to a partner with the human, who
brings his or her own specific capacities and memory type to the collab-
oration. An alternative term for this intimate and co-dependent relation
of distributed agency and memory is ‘symbiosis’ (O’Brien 2012).
The relations of translators and technological developers with both
CAT tools and machine translation illustrate perfectly the ideas of
Pickering (1995). Human and material agency are intertwined in a more
or less smooth collaborative relationship that emerges through ongoing
practice. There is a ‘reciprocal tuning of human and material agency’,
which Pickering (1995) calls the ‘dance of agency’. Here is how he
describes this ‘dance’ with regard to scientists:

Scientists tentatively construct some new machine. They then adopt

a passive role, monitoring the performance of the machine to see
whatever capture of material agency it might effect. Symmetrically,
this period of human passivity is the period in which material agency
actively manifests itself. Does the machine perform as intended? Has
an intended capture of agency been effected? Typically the answer is
no, in which case the response is another reversal of roles: human
agency is once more active in a revision of modelling vectors, fol-
lowed by another bout of human passivity and material performance,
and so on. (Pickering 1995, 21)

The way in which human translators use and improve the usefulness
of CAT tools in the course of their translation work, the (re)training
of machine translation engines, and the continuous development of
new or modified CAT and machine translation systems by techno-
logical experts in order to better respond to translation needs are all
examples of the dance of agency. In these cases it is the interplay of
human and computer memory that is the crux of the matter. There
are also clearly social and economic forces involved as individual trans-
lators interact with each other (sometimes forming sub-groups such
as ‘power users’) and comply with translation agency, institution and
client demands regarding technology whose development is motivated
by its economic advantages. In the process of ‘reciprocal tuning of tech-
nological and social worlds’ (Olohan 2011, 350) there are moments
62 Mapping Memory in Translation

of resistance on the part of both humans (experiencing difficulties in

adapting) and machines (not always functioning as planned), but there
is also accommodation in the process whereby different agencies con-
tinue to operate together effectively as human–machine assemblages
producing translations.

Early Canadian Feminist Translators and Their Heiresses

Proceeding now to our second case study of quite a different context, it

can be said that electronic memory had no role in the foundation of the
Québécois feminist translation movement, since these translators began
to be active in the 1970s and 1980s prior to the era of the personal
computer and internet. In this case study I first discuss the Canadian
group, then look at today’s ‘feminist translators’ or users of ‘feminist
translation strategies’ in order to trace to what extent they perpetuate
the memory of their forebears through discourse and practice. I will also
touch on the role of electronic memory for the contemporary group.
From the late 1970s women writers and translators in Canada devel-
oped innovative literary writing practices. The movement started in
Québec, where writing displayed a characteristic concern about lan-
guage born of political and linguistic frustrations in a context of
official bilingualism, and where the influence of post-structuralism and
French influences on feminism had been felt earlier than in the rest of
North America. The innovations of Québécois women writers involved
manipulating language in order to challenge patriarchal society and its
language, and to find a space for woman’s voice. The silent ‘e’ that marks
female gender and feminine grammatical gender in French was high-
lighted through neologisms and puns. It became a means of critiquing
male dominance and the silencing of women. Other techniques were
the fragmentation of language through disregard of traditional syntax
and grammaticality, and hyphenation of individual words to reveal their
concealed meaning (Flotow 1991, 73). The ‘feminist translators’ of such
works similarly wished to reflect innovation in some way in their own
writing techniques, often collaborating with authors to find transla-
tion solutions. In an early seminal academic article, feminist translation
techniques catalogued by Flotow (1991) are prefacing and footnoting,
supplementing and hijacking. The feminist translator refuses to be a
silent, self-effacing being, and uses prefaces and footnotes to explain
aspects of the source text as well as the choice of translation strategies;
the translator takes on a visible, active role that is both didactic and
ideological. ‘Supplementing’ is compensation using different linguistic
 Group Memory and Electronic Memory 63

resources of the target language in order to signal the feminist articu-

lation of the source text. Since, for example, the English language does
not have gender agreement or silent ‘e’ markings, the resources that
English does have must be used to convey the same or a similar message,
sometimes very creatively, as in the following:

Le ou la coupable doit être punie. [The male or female guilty party

must be punished (adjective ending in ‘e’ signalling a female)]
The guilty one must be punished, whether she is a man or a
woman. (extract from Howard Scott’s translation of Louky Bersianik’s
L’Euguélienne, cited by Flotow 1991, 75)

‘Hijacking’ refers to the situation where the translator has produced a

translation that is more feminist than the original, with or without
the original author’s collusion. This may be the most radical strategy.
An example would be to produce the expression ‘women and men’ in
the translation, whereas the original contained the more conventional
ordering of the terms in French.
Together Canadian feminist authors and translators created a strong
community of practice during the 1980s and early 1990s. Although
the impetus had initially come from Québec, English-speaking authors
became involved, and hybridity of languages in texts served to cre-
ate a translingual component in Canadian women’s writing. Flotow
(2006) illustrates how feminist authors and translators were not sepa-
rate groups: authors used bits of translation and bilingualism in their
writing, and furthermore many authors acted also as translators of oth-
ers’ texts. Another identity intimately bound into the community of
practice was that of academics: academics studied and theorized fem-
inist writing and translation, and some authors and translators were
also academics. So individuals identified with multiple activities and
sectors, and the fact that the same individual could play multiple roles
(author, editor, translator, academic), interacting and collaborating with
other members in various ways, strengthened the community. It was
the common aim to promote woman’s agency and women’s rights,
and to propagate feminist thinking through expression in deconstruc-
tive ludic writing practices that formed the basis of the community.
Flotow (2006, 15) refers to the 1980s Canadian community as ‘a small
interconnected web of women’ with a core group of about 10–15
women; well-known names are Nicole Brossard, Barbara Godard and
Suzanne de Lotbinière-Harwood. The community was highly active
and visible: its members organized conferences and founded women’s
64 Mapping Memory in Translation

publishing houses, magazines and journals. The close connection of

community members was also reinforced through the importance of
intertextuality in their writing, the reuse of intertexts and linguistic
expressions and practices, which reflected the memorial and collec-
tive aspect of individual writing and practices, including translation.
Indeed, Lotbinière-Harwood referred to translating in the feminine as
an exercise in ‘gynocentric memory’ (Flotow 2006, 17).
It seems that the 1980s and early 1990s represented the heyday of
Canadian feminist translation, and that the Canadian community is
now in a ‘dispersed’ stage (Wenger 1998). Although a cynical point
of view might be that Canadian academics and writers got onto the
feminist bandwagon because it brought symbolic capital (Flotow 2006,
14), and that the academic discourse of the time was overblown with
regard to the actual extent of experimental innovation in the ‘femi-
nist translations’ themselves (Wallmach 2006, 22), as Wallmach points
out, metadiscourse and reputation can have a powerful impact. What is
interesting from our point of view is to consider the importance of the
early Canadian feminist writing, translation and discourse as heritage.
The investigation of this question in the next section focuses on transla-
tional practice and discourse about practice in recent times. How has the
memory of the early Canadian feminist writing community and its prac-
tices been maintained through the reuse and development of ‘feminist’
translation practice?

Memory of the Canadian Feminist Translation Community

Maintaining community memory takes a variety of forms: concepts
and practices may be mentioned briefly, strongly supported, refined,
redefined, reused, partially used, adapted and challenged. Whatever the
forms of evocation or reuse of the early Canadian feminist translation
ideas and practices, they serve to show the significance of the pioneers
and to keep memory of them alive.
The process of challenge began fairly early on. There was much talk
about the strategy of ‘hijacking’: Arrojo (1994) criticized the idea that
this practice was to be promoted in terms of rights, since, as she argues,
deliberate ‘woman-handling’ is no more justified ethically than ‘man-
handling’. In 1997 Massardier-Kenney published an article whose aim
is a ‘redefinition of feminist translation practice’, and Carole Maier
(1998) questioned the restrictions of a ‘feminist’ approach in literary
translation. A fundamental issue for these two theorists and others is
the concepts at the heart of the topic: ‘feminism’, ‘gender’, ‘woman’.
Calls have been made to ‘de-essentialize’ these concepts in favour of
 Group Memory and Electronic Memory 65

more fluid, multiple approaches. Martin (2005, 35) considers that the
work of the early Canadians was on the whole based on a universalized
definition of women as oppressed by and opposed to males and their
patriarchal language; an important aim was to construct a female cul-
ture/language. Recent post-structuralist approaches to feminism have
wanted to get away from oppositional binaries, universalist homoge-
nizing definitions, and focus on a single identity category. Attention
shifted to the tremendous variations of women’s experiences in the
world; the fluidity of gender; local performative constructions of gen-
der; and the dynamic intersection among a number of an individual’s
identifications in different contexts. As Gayatri Spivak says: ‘tracking
commonality [of “woman”] through responsible translation can lead
us into areas of difference and different differentiations’ (Spivak 1993,
193). Carol Maier (1998), finding both ‘feminist’ and ‘woman-identified’
conceptions restricted, has adopted the notion of ‘woman-interrogated
translation’, which allows her when translating to interrogate gender
definitions and participate in redefinitions, interact with any gender
identities including mixed and changing gender characteristics, and
remain open to individuals’ multiple (concurrent or changing) iden-
tifications (not only gender), as befits human complexity. Although
acknowledging her own gender identification, when translating she
strives to keep it ‘in abeyance’ in order to respond openly and sensitively
to the source text, and to take responsibility for performance of that
text in translation. With a similar emphasis on performativity, Godard
(1991) coins the term ‘transformance’ to describe translating women’s
texts as an interlingual, intersubjective and transformative mode of
performance.
Possibly one effect of non-fluid thinking was the tendency of the
early Canadian feminist theorists/translators to equate feminist with
female. In her 1991 article Flotow writes that Howard Scott is ‘the only
male who describes himself as a feminist translator’ (Flotow 1991, 71),
as if this were very much an exceptional kind of situation. However,
David Eshelman (2007) unabashedly writes about espousing feminist
translation strategies in his translation of a play about feminism by
Dominique Parenteau-Lebeuf. In Eshelman’s close collaboration with
the playwright, he felt that he as the ‘apprentice’ was in the less powerful
role, such that the more typical gender power differential was trou-
bled, adding indeed another type of feminist dimension to the project
(Eshelman 2007, 24).
Another challenge to the early Canadian feminist writing and trans-
lation practices was to say that they grew out of a specific social and
66 Mapping Memory in Translation

linguistic context and period, and therefore may not be appropriate,

effective or able to be applied in very different contexts. Serrano (2005)
compares how canonical Québécois feminist writer Nicole Brossard’s
lesbian-themed novel Baroque d’aube (1995) was translated into English
and into Spanish. Serrano explains that, in contrast with the North
American context, in Spain at the end of the 1990s feminist and lesbian
themes were marginal in the publishing world, and feminist linguistic
experimentation and self-reflection were not practices espoused by writ-
ers or translators, nor were they familiar to the reading public. Thus,
the Spanish socio-literary context was not conducive to the adoption of
feminist interventionist or experimental translation practices. Indeed,
the Spanish translation Barroco al alba (1998) shows how the trans-
lator eschewed linguistic and translational creativity, no doubt partly
because of lack of comprehension of the source-text context and aims,
and partly because of the lack of prior existence of feminist experimen-
tal texts and practices in Spanish. Even when the situation began to
change in Spain into the 2000s with scholar-translators promoting fem-
inist translation (see later), there has been resistance and even refusal on
the part of publishers, as evidenced by the case of Reimondez’s (2009)
feminist translation of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
Still, as Reimondez affirms, going out on a limb and being criticized
or attacked due to feminist translation/writing practices may be the
only way to make those practices known, and to contribute to working
towards their acceptance. One of the main issues at hand in this case,
the use of the masculine gender as the generic form, has certainly been
accepted elsewhere as a legitimate gripe following awareness-raising
campaigns.
With regard to challenging the actual ‘feminist translation strate-
gies’, theorists have pointed out that these so-called specific strategies
are in fact not specific. In her analysis of ‘feminist strategies’ used in
Barbara Godard’s 1983 translation of Nicole Brossard’s novel L’Amèr ou
le chapitre effrité (1977), Wallmach (2006) finds that they can all be
encompassed under existing categories proposed by translation scholars
Delabastita, Vinay and Darbelnet, and Hervey and Higgins: substitu-
tion, repetition, deletion, addition, compensation by footnoting and
compensation by splitting. Similarly, Massardier-Kenney (1997) points
out that there is really only one Canadian strategy that is specifically
feminist, ‘hijacking’, since this involves a deliberate feminization of the
source text. Otherwise, Massardier-Kenney finds that ‘feminist’ transla-
tion has adapted existing translation strategies rather than inventing
 Group Memory and Electronic Memory 67

new ones. Yet this in the end is not of great importance, since as
Massardier-Kenney says, it is not the strategies themselves that count
but the ideology informing the use of the strategies; they are put to
use for feminist purposes. It is also not frequency of use of strategies –
a notion on which Wallmach (2006) depends to criticize metatexts by
feminist translators as overblown – that is uppermost in importance,
since one prominent instance of a strategy, for example in the title of
the novel, can have a huge ideological and poetic impact. There may
be strategies that the early feminist translators neglected. Massardier-
Kenney (1997) highlights an important strategy that was not explicitly
considered by the Canadian community: ‘recovery’. Recovery consists of
widening the canon by rediscovering, publishing and translating texts
written by women in earlier eras. Massardier-Kenney also extends the
importance of intertextuality for feminist translators to the notion of
‘use of parallel texts’, whereby translators make use of analogous target-
language literary texts by women writers in translating source texts that
may or may not be overtly feminist.
Regardless of challenges to early Canadian feminist translation, the
memory of their ideological motivation, concepts and practices remains
strong. In situations of social injustice regarding women, it may well
be warranted for writers and translators to adopt strong interventionist
stances and accept essentialism for strategic purposes. Feminist writ-
ing and translation can thus be a political practice with aims of social
change. Feminist translation may also simply be a matter of doing jus-
tice to the source text in conveying its themes and poetico-linguistic
nature. Circumstances are variable. Indeed, it is always wise when
comprehending translational action to take into account a range of
parameters of the translating situation such as the nature of the source
text, the translator’s interpretation of the source text, specific linguistic
and literary resources available, norms and preferences of the publishing
house (which may be imposed by editors) and the socio-literary tar-
get context, relevant aspects of the broad sociopolitical context, and
the goals of the translator. Let us examine, therefore, some actual con-
texts and cases of contemporary gender-conscious translation in order
to investigate to what extent these translators are/consider themselves
successors to the Canadian pioneers.
The North American French–English context continues to produce
gender-conscious writing and translating. When writing about his
English translation of French Canadian dramatist Dominick Parenteau-
Lebeuf’s play Dévoilement devant notaire (2002), David Eshelman (2007)
68 Mapping Memory in Translation

makes reference to early Canadian feminist translation practice as his

source of inspiration. The choice to employ feminist translation meth-
ods suited the source text perfectly: it is a play about the conflicted
feelings of the daughter of a feminist in 1990s Québec. Interestingly,
Eshelman has made this content clearer in the title of the play in trans-
lation: The Feminist’s Daughter. Eshelman explains three strategies that
he adopted. The first he calls ‘supplementing’. He provided the reader
with information about the playwright, contemporary Québec theatre
and the themes and writing style of the play, in order not only to
introduce Parenteau-Lebeuf’s work to an Anglophone audience, but also
to create understanding of his translation choices. Eshelman calls the
second strategy ‘looking at gender on a word-by-word basis’. What he
means is not only the aim to pay attention to procedures for express-
ing gender in language in both source text and translation, but also
the idea that each case needs to be considered individually and may
result in different translational solutions. In the case of a play trans-
lated for performance, strategies that involve spelling or typography
and not sound (e.g. ‘other’) do not work. In the original play there
are some instances of gendered neologisms. An example is ‘bourrelle’
as a female form of ‘bourreau’, which means ‘executioner’. Eshelman
created a neologism in English, ‘guillotineress’, which evokes both ‘mur-
deress’ and beheading, mentioned as the usual execution technique in
the text. Eshelman reports that he also occasionally used gendered pro-
nouns in the French way, for example calling a thing ‘she’. The third
strategy mentioned is ‘closelaboration’ (close collaboration) with the
author: Eshelman exchanged many emails with Parenteau-Lebeuf, dis-
cussing with her aspects of the source text as well as translation ideas.
When it came to the translation, Eshelman gave precedence to his own
knowledge of English usage. Parenteau-Lebeuf suggested ‘Unveiling’ as a
title for the play, but Eshelman felt that the connotations of ‘unveiling’
were much more positive than those of the French ‘dévoilement’, and
therefore opted for a very different title that still remained intriguing.
Eshelman concludes that for him the most useful aspect of following
a feminist translation approach was that it helped him to interpret
the text, and to do justice to the playwright’s language and views on
feminism represented in the text.
From the late 1990s and particularly in the 2000s, a strong interest in
feminist translation emerged in Spain, sometimes related to the regions
such as Catalonia and Galicia where issues of identity and language are
central (much as they are in Québec). One could even say that Spain
is the successor to Québec as the new hotbed for feminist translation
 Group Memory and Electronic Memory 69

practice and theorization. This new Spanish community of practice is

evidenced in the significant presence of Spanish researchers in publica-
tions, conferences and PhD studies on gender/translation issues. Brufau
Alvira (2011) explains that there are two main foci among Spanish femi-
nist translator-theorists. The first area of focus is of a linguistic-discursive
character: the relation between power and language is recognized in
the promotion of non-sexist rewriting. Inspiration has been found in
North American feminist sociolinguistics as well as in Canadian femi-
nist translation techniques, such as Lotbinière-Harwood’s suggestion of
re-sexualizing language when translating from languages whose forms
and grammar are less gender explicit.
Let us look in detail at one study with this focus. It concerns the
retranslation into Spanish of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own.
Bengoechea (2011) compares two translations of the text, one by emi-
nent writer Jorge Luis Borges, first published in 1935–36, and the other,
more recent translation by Maria Milagros Rivera-Garretas, published in
2003. Bengoechea (2011, 411) relates that Rivera-Garretas is a feminist
historian and theorist of sexual difference, who has adopted ‘some of
the strategies called for and used by Canadian feminist translators and
traductologists’. She follows, for example, the practice of actively show-
ing the translator’s presence through providing a prologue and notes
in which her political stance is made clear. In terms of translational
choices in the text, there is a significant difference in the way pronouns
are rendered in the two translations. In the Spanish language, person
gender is illustrated in some pronouns where in the equivalent English
pronoun gender is not indicated, for example in certain Spanish forms
of the equivalents for ‘you’ and ‘we’. Woolf’s text comprises a series of
talks that she gave at Cambridge University’s exclusively women’s col-
leges of Newnham and Girton. Throughout the text she addresses the
group of women as ‘you’, and also uses the pronoun ‘we’. Borges seems
not to have known or to have ignored the contextual information, and
translates the pronoun as a masculine form that can conventionally sig-
nify the universal, both men and women; from a feminist point of view
this is a case of ‘androcentric normative grammar’. Rivera-Garretas opts
for feminine gender pronouns. This action seems entirely justified by
the actual context of Woolf’s speech, and could be considered a mat-
ter of restoring justice to the source-text meaning. What really reveals
a feminist stance on the part of Rivera-Garretas is her treatment of ref-
erences in Woolf’s speech that genuinely seem to refer to a universal in
the specific context: the mention of ‘poets’, ‘children’ and ‘us’. Rivera-
Garretas deliberately feminizes these references to become the Spanish
70 Mapping Memory in Translation

equivalents of female poets and female ‘us’; and she splits ‘children’ into
‘daughters and sons’ in her translation in order to make the feminine
visible (Bengoechea 2011, 419). This strategy could be characterized
as feminist ‘hijacking’, in parallel to Borges’s ‘masculinist hijacking’
elsewhere. Each translator reformulates the meaning in line with a par-
ticular ideology available at a particular time and place in history, for as
we saw earlier in the case of a translation of Nicole Brossard, the Spanish
socio-literary sphere has not always been accepting of feminist writing
and rewriting. Serrano (2005, 121) locates the greater openness to fem-
inism and other gender/sexual-based ideologies in Spain as occurring
from about 2004.
The second area of focus in the Spanish context noted by Brufau
Alvira (2011) relates to cultural identities: the objective is to promote
the political claims of women and minority groups. Here an impor-
tant suggestion is made that Brufau Alvira names ‘feminist intersectional
translation’. This approach aims to take into account multiple identities
and co-occurring potentially discriminatory areas (for example gender,
ethnicity, nationality, social class, location, status such as migrant) in
line with the recognition in today’s feminism of the complexity of
identity, as mentioned earlier. The content of the source text is of
course an important influence: a source text that features poor African
American women speaking their sociolect, or description of the par-
ticular cultural practices involving women in a rural region of India,
may be a good candidate for an intersectional approach. Brufau Alvira
affirms that, in contrast with some more rigid feminist models, the
intersectional translation approach requires a flexible outlook regarding
translation strategies and choices, since a variety of different techniques
may contribute to the goal of promoting equality. Another non-rigid
feminist model proposed by Carolyn Shread, ‘metramorphosis’, may
allow intersectionality to become explicit in the translation where it
was not in the original. Metramorphosis refers to the feminine psy-
choanalytic Symbolic concept of ‘matrix’, which supplements rather
than replaces Lacan’s masculine phallus. With regard to translation,
the outlook is one of generativity, expansion and development. Shread
(2007), for example, introduces Kreyol into her English translation
(in view of the Kreyol-speaking Haitian American readership) where the
original Haitian female-authored text was in standard French. My dis-
cussion of Brufau Alvira and Shread together illustrates how there
are many links across national boundaries and languages between
like-minded contemporary approaches and scholars who are aware
 Group Memory and Electronic Memory 71

of each other’s work, meeting in conferences and coordinating their

interests in common publishing enterprises. Scholars, concepts and
scholarship travel (with translation as one useful vector), as shown
in the next context discussed, which presents a definite contrast in
some ways.
In her portrayal of feminist translation in Turkey, Bozkurt (2014) starts
her article by outlining the history and strategies of Canadian feminist
translation as a source of inspiration. She then explains that the spe-
cific Turkish context gave rise to particular feminist translation activities
and practices, namely a woman presenting her own original writing as
a translation (pseudotranslation) of a male author in order to achieve
publication in the restrictive male-dominated literary world in Turkey,
particularly prior to the 1980s; translating 1980s and 1990s works by
European and North American feminists into Turkish in order to intro-
duce their thought; and after the 1980s translating Turkish women
authors into world languages so that their work is better known. It was
not until the 2000s that some examples of Turkish translations adopting
anti-traditional creative feminist practices were published in supportive
publishing houses. Bozkurt cites the 2002 translation of SCUM Manifesto
by Ayşe Düzkan and the 2008 translation of Virgin: The Untouched History
by Emek Ergün. The translators of these works both wrote substantial
prefaces and footnotes, which are bold in content, explicating the source
text and announcing the translator’s feminist stance and choices. In her
own article about the translation, Ergün (2013) explains that for her
translating Virgin was an act of ‘intellectual activism’, since it transmit-
ted scholarship from a Western-identified feminist text to contribute to
sociopolitical movement-building and the unsettling of virginity poli-
tics in Turkey. In the body of the two translations that Bozkurt studied
there is a careful choice of lexis, such as the use of ‘hymen’ by Ergün as
opposed to the more standard Turkish term, ‘kızlık zarı’, which she con-
siders patriarchal. Düzkan retains the direct references to sexual organs
as in the original text rather than resorting to euphemisms, and when
faced with the use of ‘she’ as a generic form in the source text, she ‘sup-
plements’ the lack of the he/she form in Turkish by using a marked
non-sexist lexical choice, ‘biliminsanı’, for the translation of the word
‘scientist’.
A final example of recent feminist translation and theorization
presents a case of a mixed strategy with regard to feminist aims. Lina
Fisher (2010) discusses her German translations of poems by Carol
Ann Duffy from the collection Mean Time (1993). The article has the
72 Mapping Memory in Translation

intriguing title ‘Theory and Practice of Feminist Translation in the 21st

Century’. Fisher makes reference to the early feminist translation move-
ment in the 1970s and 1980s, and regrets that feminist translation
seems to receive less attention now, since sexist language and thinking
continue today. On the other hand, she herself demonstrates perhaps
why it receives less attention: her approach is less intractable, more
nuanced than that of early feminist translators. It is in line with Maier’s
(1998) ‘woman-interrogation’, an approach of close interpretation of
the source-text nuances and of the implications of translation choices.
Fisher acknowledges that Duffy does not define herself as a woman or
a feminist poet. Although gender perspectives play a role in her poetry,
in a number of poems it is not clear whether the personae are male
or female. Fisher’s exploratory goal was to discover to what extent she
could employ feminist translation strategies without overshadowing the
poems’ other characteristics such as rich imagery. Poetry often presents
more ambiguity and more interpretative possibilities than prose. Fisher
recounts a case where the word ‘the stranger’ in a particular poem could
refer to either a man, a woman or a child in different imagined scenarios.
Unlike English, a choice has to be made in the German language, which
expresses person gender. Here Fisher opted for ‘die Fremde’, which is
feminine, refusing to give precedence to ‘der Fremde’ (masculine) as
a normative choice. In referring to the ‘small female skull’, although
the grammatical gender of German ‘schädel’ (skull) is masculine, Fisher
used the pronoun ‘sie’ (she) because of the reference to it being the
skull of a female, where the gender of the person is significant in the
narrative of the poem. Fisher says that these choices, which involved
making the female more visible, were relatively easy to implement. In a
third case Duffy writes ‘for a drenched whore to stare you full in the
face’. Fisher considered using an archaic German word for ‘prostitute’,
‘Freudenmädchen’, which has more positive connotations than ‘whore’.
However, given the interpretation of the poem as a whole, she decided
that it was important to convey the negative connotations of the scene,
and chose to preserve the world constructed by the poem, rather than
making an overtly political intervention to promote women. Overall,
in her translation Fisher endeavoured to make a feminist point wher-
ever possible, but she also wanted to preserve elements essential to
interpretation of the poem, which at times might lessen the feminist
agenda.
It seems that the small early tight-knit Canadian community of prac-
tice has given way to a looser international community with a particular
hot-spot of Spanish scholars/practitioners. Taking its lead from the early
 Group Memory and Electronic Memory 73

Canadians’ work as well as from feminist linguistics and other feminist

and gender-conscious theoretical positions, feminist/gender-conscious
translation is undertaken for translations into and from many lan-
guages, now reaching beyond European languages to Arabic, Turkish
and Chinese, among others. Practices are varied depending on texts and
contexts, with more reflective, nuanced and intersectional approaches
than in the early days. In 2013, for example, the call for papers for an
edited volume titled Feminist Translation Studies: Local and Transnational
Perspectives specifically embraces disciplinary, geographical, sociocul-
tural, sexual orientation and textual genre diversity. Importantly, the
community of practice has been widened beyond literary translation
to gender-conscious translators of non-literary texts. In these transla-
tion practices for non-literary texts attention is paid to use of pronouns,
gender-neutral forms and splitting (specifying both genders), depend-
ing on the target language. Occasionally there may even be support of
a more radical strategy such as hijacking. An example of this is found
on the Sheela Na Gig blog, where the blog author calls for the refusal by
translators of legal texts to reproduce source-text sexist sentiments and
language (Sheela Na Gig). In the broad international gender-conscious
translation community, memory of the Canadian pioneers is strong.
This memory expresses itself through practice (use of their techniques,
or reworking and supplementation of the techniques) as well as in dis-
course. Electronic networks, which did not exist in the days of the
early Canadian translators, link writers and translators of a feminist
persuasion worldwide into this affinity group. The call for papers for
Feminist Translation Studies: Local and Transnational Perspectives resulted
from the collaboration of two volume editors from different countries,
Olga Castro and Emek Ergün, and would depend on international con-
tributors; this could only be efficiently organized thanks to electronic
memory devices. Such international collaborative activities indicate that
the ‘transnational feminist translation community’ is flourishing in
Wenger’s (1998) coalescing stage.

In this chapter I have discussed the preoccupations of two differ-

ent groups: proz.commers’ attitudes towards translation memory and
machine translation expressed in forum discussions; and the attitudes
and ideas of contemporary translators who undertake ‘feminist trans-
lation’ regarding past and present practices. Electronic memory was
shown to hold an important place today both in terms of translators’
tools/partners and in terms of networked communication, which allows
the establishment of local and international affinity groups. I have
74 Mapping Memory in Translation

also shown that in different ways for the two groups the identity as
a group depends on foundational principles and practices (e.g. sharing
ideas in discussion forums and question sessions; feminist translation
approaches and strategies), whose memory is retained in the present
through continuing to espouse those principles and practices at the
same time as new developments in the community and in practices are
embraced.
4
Textual Memory

In the discussion of Mansfield’s short stories in translation, electronic

translation memory mechanisms and feminist translation practices in
Chapters 2 and 3, I mentioned examples of how textual passages from
a different text produced at an earlier time are embedded and thus
remembered in the present text. Such cases come under the topic of
textual memory. Let us first explore in general terms the role of texts for
memory.
Shared memory, whether among members of a small social group, a
national group or a transnational grouping, arises through the interac-
tion of group members and also through the production, exchange and
maintenance of cultural products. Vectors of communication and trans-
mission are thus fundamental in the dynamic process of (re)creating
shared memory. The main vectors of memory transmission may be
categorized as oral communication; written communication; images
including artworks; practices such as customs, rituals and ceremonies;
monuments and museums; and multimedial forms, notably films and
websites. Oral communication is an important means of transmitting
memory. However, the written word offers more durable possibilities
for the preservation of memory, with medial forms that have differed
over the centuries, from manuscript to printed book to internet pages.
Texts that may have a memorial function encompass a wide variety of
genres, including history books, tourist pamphlets, newspaper articles,
novels, children’s story books and so on. The specificity of the means of
transmission has an impact on how memory is shaped and influenced.
Take, for example, historical references in newspapers: as well as reflect-
ing and reinforcing memory of the historical event, the norms of the
newspaper medium shape how historical references are used and con-
veyed (Brownlie 2013). Importantly, texts have two different significant

75
76 Mapping Memory in Translation

memorial roles: a text may be the means of conveying memory of a past

event, lifestyles, persons or ideas; and a famous text may itself be part of
a group’s memory. The case studies in this chapter concern such mon-
umental texts: a classic novel by French author Emile Zola, and a series
of great historical documents.
Both knowledge of past events/people/ideas and cultural items may
fall into oblivion, into the ‘archive’ (Assmann 2010) of cultural mem-
ory. In order for the memory of a past event or cultural item to remain
in circulation, in the ‘canon’ (Assmann 2010), the event or item must
be represented again and again over decades or centuries in the same or
different media and genres (newspaper articles, photos, diaries, novels,
films, web pages, museum displays, historical re-enactments etc.). Astrid
Erll (2009) refers to this as ‘remediation’.1 For a wider picture, then, texts
need to be seen as operating alongside other types of transmission of
memory of a particular historical event or cultural item (for exemplifi-
cation of this, see Chapter 5). The reiterations and remediations involve
a certain sameness that allows recognition, but they will also gener-
ally involve some transformation with regard to earlier representations.
Mediated memory is indeed always dynamic, as it is conceptually and
affectively mobile: both conceptions of the past and feelings attached
to the past change. Very importantly, memory involves a dialectical
evolution in a relation between past and present. A new generation
remakes a memory in a new environment, reconstructing the past in
the light of the present. The past is thus malleable in the form of mem-
ory responding to the needs of the present, but the past also provides a
constraint on memory such that it can be represented variably but not in
an entirely arbitrary manner. Memory of traumatic events, of traditions
and of canonical works may be very persistent; memory thus involves
both stability and change (Schwartz 2000).
What is known about a past event or cultural item is in fact a set of
variable existent medial constructions. Remediation is not just a mat-
ter of repeated mentions of the famous event in different media and
genres, or of a new version in relation to a canonical text, but is also
a question of the reuse of previous mentions and texts, creating thus
a long-lasting and wide-ranging web of memorial intertextuality. The
extent of remediation becomes particularly significant when dealing
with memory of famous long-distant events and items, and it is the
convergence of multiple and continuing remediations that constructs
a ‘memory site’, a phenomenon that has acquired a special memorial
status for a particular social group. Following Pierre Nora (1984), a mul-
titude of things can become a memory site of the nation – an institution,
 Textual Memory 77

a monument, a famous event or person, a famous book; what matters

is their prominent status as memorial focal points, their symbolic sig-
nification, and the way in which the sites are constantly reinterpreted
and reiterated. With regard to the cases under study here, the classic
novel and the great historical documents as well as the great univer-
sal concepts that they convey constitute cultural beacons or memory
sites.
Interlingual translation is one type of remediation, one type of tex-
tual reiteration reconstructing memories of past texts and their content.
Interlingual translation has an important role in the translinguistic con-
struction of memory sites in terms of perpetuating knowledge of famous
events and people, contributing to the continuing existence of famous
texts (the Benjaminian afterlife of texts) and propagating the content of
significant documents. Because interlingual translation involves differ-
ent languages and possibly different cultures and time periods, it will
entail transformation, including the proliferation of different interpre-
tations that renew the memory site. The focus of this chapter, textual
memory, can be defined as the way in which memory of earlier texts
is embedded and elaborated on in subsequent texts. All interlingual
translation is a matter of textual memory, since the translation embeds
the memory of its source text. Even if a translation can also be con-
ceived as forgetting the source text in the sense of effacing it through
the act of replacement or reproducing it selectively, a translation main-
tains at the same time the role of perpetuating memory of its source
text. Yet we must go beyond simply source and target text, since from
a memory studies perspective it is preferable not to study single or two
related texts in isolation, because memory is always a matter of relations
among numerous cultural items. In Michael Rothberg’s (2009, 3–17)
terms, memory is ‘multidirectional’ in that we easily link up memo-
ries of events or cultural items from very different time periods and
geographical regions. Linking texts in different languages through trans-
lation plays a role in facilitating multidirectionality through building up
transcultural and transtemporal networks of texts and knowledge of the
content and concepts that they embody.
Scholars in translation studies have embraced similar thinking under
the banner of ‘intertextuality’, the difference from my approach being
that less importance is accorded to the temporal dimension. An
intertextuality perspective conceives of translational activity as being
located in a rich network of textual connections, influences and reuses.
Viewed in this way, it is easy to accept that translation (like mem-
ory) is both meaning-preserving and meaning-making due to ever
78 Mapping Memory in Translation

new intertextual contexts. Theo Hermans (2007, 32–37) speaks of

‘translation-specific intertextuality’, which encompasses the different
kinds of relations that hold between translated texts in a given language;
the two main types of relation are a translation’s reference to previous
translations of the same original, and to other translations of the same
time period. In terms of affectivity, the relations between the texts may
be ‘friendly filiations’ in the case of accepted translational norms at a
particular time, or ‘hostile stand-offs’ in the case of critical new trans-
lations. In other words, Hermans conceives of a self-referential system
of translated texts. Sakellariou (2015) warns that such thinking may risk
giving ultimate agency to texts at the expense of human agents and
social contexts.
In my exemplifications of textual memory in the two case studies
in this chapter, I give an important explanatory role to social factors
and human agents without denying that texts themselves can be con-
ceived of as exercising agency; I not only place importance on the
relations between translated texts, but consider relations in a network
of all pertinent texts whether translated or not; the temporal aspect
is emphasized, since the network of pertinent texts involves texts pro-
duced over a long time period; and the studies explore the developing
memory of historical eras, ideas and philosophies through texts, as well
as the memory of texts as cultural products. Retranslation is the con-
cern of the first case study. Retranslations – that is, a series of different
translations into one language of the same source text produced over
time – serve to keep the memory of that source text alive, contributing
to its canonization in cultural memory. The particular case studied is
that of the multiple British retranslations of Emile Zola’s novel Nana
(1880). The second case study is concerned with the (trans)national
dialogical development of ideology through great historical documents
across time, languages and cultural spheres, focusing particularly on
how memory of earlier documents was used and transformed. Here
Brodzki’s (2007) notion of translation as a fundamental cultural pro-
cess of critical dynamic displacement and transformative survival comes
to the fore. The specific case concerns the development of (human)
rights thinking since the Middle Ages in England, France, the United
States and the United Nations. The two case studies were chosen because
they are complementary: the first case covers literary translation over
a century-long period (nineteenth to twentieth centuries), and the
second non-literary translation over a much longer period from the
thirteenth to twentieth centuries. Both cases continue our theme of
rights.
 Textual Memory 79

Retranslation of Zola

Rigney (2010, 349) lists ‘translation into other languages’ as just one
of the ways in which a literary work as an ‘agent’ gives rise to further
cultural activities. The literary work can also play the role of ‘stabi-
lizer’ in figuring a particular time period in a memorable way that
provides a frame for later recollections. Emile Zola’s novels have served
to depict late nineteenth-century France in a striking and memorable
way, both for readers of the original French texts and for readers of
their translations in other languages. Rigney also writes of the literary
work becoming an ‘object of recollection’ (2010, 351) itself in other
media and forms of expression, and she highlights how remediation
of the literary work as object of recollection is an important way of
keeping the narrative up to date; that is, memorable according to the
norms of the contemporary group. This seems to be the main reason for
retranslation of canonical novels. Zola was chosen for the case study,
not only as a well-known author whose works have given rise to multi-
ple retranslations, but also as an innovative novelist who championed
the right to communicate in his goal to provide a depiction of social
reality that did not shy away from explicit treatment of such topics
as working-class poverty, illness, alcoholism and prostitution. However,
due to censorship undertaken under or in view of the Obscene Publica-
tions Act (1857) in Britain at the time (when ‘obscenity’ had a broader
meaning than today), the right to communicate Zola’s works freely in
translation was far from guaranteed (Brownlie 2007).
The case-study corpus comprises Emile Zola’s novel Nana and its five
main British translations. I have labelled the translations with letters
from the alphabet to aid presentation: A is the 1884 translation pub-
lished by Henry Vizetelly (the translator is anonymous); B is the 1895
translation by Victor Plarr; C is the 1956 translation by Charles Duff;
D is the 1972 translation by George Holden; and E is the 1992 transla-
tion by Douglas Parmée. The number of retranslations indicates that the
text is a transcultural memory site, and according to its latest translator
is destined to remain so:

Nana will surely continue to charm and outrage the prurient and
the pious, the student of social and political relations or of the psy-
chology of sex and crowds, the feminist, the male chauvinist, and
of course the sturdy ‘general reader’, who will ensure that this will
remain amongst the most widely read of Zola’s novels. (Introduction,
Zola 1998 [1992], xxvi)
80 Mapping Memory in Translation

Hot and Cold Translations

An initial issue to discuss with regard to the retranslations is to what
extent the memory of closely related texts (other than the source text)
is embedded in the present retranslation. ‘Related texts’ include critical
literature. It is only in the most recent translation by Parmée that there
is an extensive introduction accompanied by a select bibliography of
critical works on Zola’s novels in general and Nana in particular. This
apparatus was provided by the translator, who is a specialist in French
studies and was previously a fellow at Queen’s College, Cambridge.2
It seems that only after a certain amount of time and when a text has
become a classic, an item in the cultural memory, will such an appara-
tus be included for the use primarily of academically inclined readers.
In other words, it is unlikely that the very first translation(s) will be
treated in this way.
Vanderschelden (2000, 8) uses the metaphor of ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ trans-
lations to distinguish a first translation (hot) undertaken soon after
publication of the source text, and retranslations (cold), which are
undertaken with the distance afforded by passed time and can make
use of knowledge of critical reception of the work. ‘Cold’ translations
can also make use of earlier translations and evaluations of those trans-
lations. When comparing the five translations, it is noticeable that the
translator of Translation D used Translation B3: very frequently particular
renderings in Translation B are employed verbatim (or nearly verbatim,
just changing one word) in the later translation. Here is an example:

Nana 234. C’était une sensation de chute dans la folie de la chair . . .

B 214. He felt as if there were a great downward movement in the

direction of fleshly madness . . .

D 230. He felt as if there were a great downward rush in the direction

of fleshly madness . . .

Embedding phrases from an 1895 translation in a 1972 translation may

be thought to give rise to heterogeneity and even incongruity, since lan-
guage usage changes over time. However, this does not occur, since the
translator of D only adopts the B options if they suit his contempo-
rary standards. Here is an example showing how the translator of B
did not reuse the earlier translation, probably because the colloquial
language of the time, in particular the term ‘squint’, is now not well
known:
 Textual Memory 81

Nana 256. Il y a un tas d’emmerdeurs

B 236. there’s a whole heap of damned squints about
D 253. there’s a lot of bastards running after me

We have then the example of translator D remembering Translation B

through textual reiteration, but also on occasion deliberately forgetting
Translation B if renderings were not deemed appropriate or alterna-
tives were preferred. Indeed, translating always involves choices from
a range of alternatives, and thus there is an inexhaustible potential for
retranslation. It must also be acknowledged that translator D had first to
remember (consult) Translation B in order to forget (reject) its renderings
on occasion. Similarly, for the other retranslations, it may have been
a case of the translator consulting earlier translations (remembering
them), before deliberately deciding to strike out on his own (forgetting
them).

Memorial Relations of Source Text and Retranslations

With regard to textual memory, a primary relation to observe is how the
source text is remembered through its representation in the different
translations. It is interesting to investigate how and why different ways
of remembering the source text have been produced, which should shed
light on the question of why earlier translations were forgotten in the
sense of superseded in the production of new translations. I will evoke
several reasons why the novel was retranslated a number of times across
a 100-year span, investigating how the five translations are different and
giving examples from them.

Restoring Memory of the Source Text

I start with what seems to be the most striking aspect of the set of
translations, which concerns the contrast between the first translation
(published in 1884) and the retranslations. Zola’s Nana is the story of
a Parisian working-class girl, Nana, who rises in society to become a
famous courtesan. Given the subject matter as well as Zola’s natural-
ist writing style, there are many references to sensuality and sex, and
the language is quite explicit. Such features were not acceptable to the
British Victorian middle-class ideology of moral uprightness and ‘deli-
cacy’. An important aspect of delicacy was linguistic prudishness: verbal
references to sex, sensuality, bodily functions and sensual parts of the
body were avoided, or euphemisms were used. Another aspect of del-
icacy was the avoidance of swearing; in particular, ‘taking the Lord’s
name in vain’ was not acceptable. This links to the prevailing piousness
82 Mapping Memory in Translation

and religious conservatism of the time (Weeks 1981; Perrin 1969). The
effect of the Victorian middle-class ideology is apparent in the way
Translation A was undertaken. The contextual background to Transla-
tion A (1884) is that the publisher, Henry Vizetelly, wished to publish
popular editions in English of Zola’s works. Given the aim of publication
for a broad readership, the powerful middle class and its ideology, and
the threat of prosecution under the Obscene Publications Act, the pub-
lisher/translator undertook ‘self-censorship’ in the translation (Merkle
2000). In order to ensure the existence and survival of the translation,
such action was needed. Later eras were more relaxed in mores with
attention to matters of freedom of speech and communication; sub-
sequent translations do not show the heavy degree of self-censorship
of the first. Reinstating renderings of certain elements of the original
in order to provide a more complete memory of the source text is an
important motivation for retranslation. Let us examine some examples.
Minor omission is a common way of dealing with ‘offensive’ parts of
the source text in Translation A. In the first example the list of body parts
of the original is replaced by the single term, a superordinate, ‘body’,
whereas the retranslations do not operate this reduction:

Example 1

Nana 159. . . . avec ses rires, avec sa gorge et sa croupe, gonflés de vices
[with her laughter, her bosom and her rump swollen with vices]4

A 124. with her smiles and her body full of vice

B 142. with her laughter, and her bosom, and her hips, which seemed
swollen with many vices

C 117. with her laughter, her bosom and her rump swollen out with
wickedness

D 155. with her laughter, her breasts and her crupper, which seemed
swollen with vice

E 129. with her laugher, her breasts, the curves of her buttocks [ . . . ]
vicious to the core.

Another regularly used technique of self-censorship in Translation A is

substitution. In the following example, Translations A and C substitute
a phrase with a quite different meaning from the source text. It is inter-
esting to speculate whether 1950s Britain (Translation C) was like the
Victorian era in being inhospitable to such direct sexual references:
 Textual Memory 83

Example 2

Nana 100. –Tout de même on coucherait avec, déclara Fauchery. [‘All

the same you’d sleep with her’, declared Fauchery.]

A 72. ‘All the same she’s a fine woman,’ declared Fauchery.

B 85. ‘All the same, all right in bed,’ declared Fauchery.

C 67. ‘All the same, she’s nicely made,’ declared Fauchery.

D 96. ‘All the same, she’d be all right in bed,’ declared Fauchery.
E 74. ‘All the same, she’s eminently bedworthy’, said Fauchery.

A less frequently found technique is to leave the offending word in

the foreign language without explanation, as in the following example.
Note also the euphemistic expression of Translation B, and the following
three translations, which are very close to the source text:

Example 3

Nana 388. Nana était enceinte de trois mois [Nana was three months
pregnant]
A 324. Nana was three months enceinte

B 364. Nana had been in the family way for the past three months
C 313. Nana was three months pregnant

D 385. Nana had been pregnant for the last three months

E 344. Nana was three months pregnant

The examples already given relate to sex, sensuality and the body.
Religion is another area in which self-censorship is undertaken in Trans-
lation A. ‘God’ (‘Dieu’) is not used in expletives. Finding any similarity
between religion and prostitution would certainly not have been accept-
able to the Victorian church.5 In the following passage Nana in a
stage role is compared with God; Translation A makes impossible any
reference to the Christian God:

Example 4

Nana 464. Paris la verrait toujours comme ça, allumée au milieu du

cristal, en l’air, ainsi qu’un bon Dieu. [Paris would always see her like
84 Mapping Memory in Translation

that, illuminated in the midst of the crystal, in the air, like a good
God.]

A 389. Paris would ever see her thus, beaming in the midst of the
crystal, poised in the air like a goddess.

B 436. Paris would always picture her thus – would see her shining
high up among crystal glass like the good God Himself.

C 378. Paris would always see her like that: brightly illuminated in
the centre of the crystal, high in the air, just as a good God might be.

D 460. Paris would always see her like that, shining high up in the
midst of all that glittering crystal, like the Blessed Sacrament.

E 415. Paris would always see her like that, blazing with light in the
middle of all that crystal, floating in the air like an image of the good
Lord.

These examples show that Translation A often forgot/suppressed/modified

elements of the source text that were remembered/restored in later
translations; in this way Zola’s desire to champion freedom of literary
expression was upheld by the later translators. There is a clear overlap
between social ideologies and literary norms, in that what is considered
acceptable in literary texts is affected by current social mores, as will be
developed in the following discussion.

Dialectical Relations of Past and Present in Textual Memory

Memory is a construction that relates the past to the present involving
ongoing transformation. Another important reason for retranslation is
relating the text from the past to current norms and particular circum-
stances at the time of translating; the item from the past is approached
through the prism of the ever-evolving present. Retranslations that
adapt to the literary, linguistic and translational norms of their era
are welcomed by the reading public and thus publishers, and are an
effective means of keeping the text alive and memorable (Rigney 2010,
351). In Victorian times the dominant norm in the writing of novels
was a certain ‘delicacy’ of expression, of which we have seen evidence
in Translation A’s renderings in the previous section. Novels had to
be written with young, innocent girls in mind as prospective readers
(Perrin 1969). This is not the norm in contemporary English literature:
(religious) swear words and explicit reference to sex and sensuality are
acceptable. The following example is wonderfully ‘tidy’ in that it could
illustrate how the norm with regard to the expression of sensuality in
 Textual Memory 85

literature changed gradually over time. Each rendering is more explicit

than the previous one:

Example 5

Nana 416. ce fleuve d’or dont le flot lui coulait entre les membres
[this river of gold whose stream flowed between her limbs]

A 347. this everflowing river of gold

B 390. a river of gold, the tide of which almost enveloped her

C 336. this great river of gold, the flood of which ran between her
legs

D 412. this river of gold which flowed between her legs

E 369. this stream of money flowing through her thighs

Of course, the progression is not so easily displayed in other passages.

One interesting effect of the norm of sensual explicitness in contem-
porary literature is that on occasion where there does not seem to be
a sensual connotation in the French, the most recent translations (D
and E) add a sensual reference. The shift over the 100-year period from
censorship of sexual allusions to addition of sexual allusions in transla-
tions of the source text demonstrates the strength of the target-culture
component of the past–present memorial dialectic. Here is an example
of addition of a sexual allusion in translations D and E:

Example 6

Nana 88. La grande chaise avait une mine chiffonnée, un renverse-

ment de dossier qui l’amusaient, maintenant. [The big chair had a
rumpled look, a curve in the back which now amused him.]

A 63. The big easy-chair had a tumbled look, and a curve in the back
which now rather amused him.
B 74. The big chair had a rumpled look – its nether cushions had been
rumbled, a fact which now amused him.

C 57. The big chair had a rumpled expression with its back cushion
reversed; and now it amused him.

D 84. The big chair had a rumpled look, its back a suggestive slant
which now amused him.
86 Mapping Memory in Translation

E 63. That large armchair had a saucy look, its back was tipped up in
a way, which, on reflection, was amusingly suggestive.

Turning now to linguistic norms, the justification often given for

retranslations is to produce a translation in contemporary target lan-
guage, which is therefore acceptable to a contemporary readership. We
saw a case of this earlier in the discussion of translator D’s decision
sometimes not to reuse Translation B renderings. A striking example
of a change of linguistic norms reflected in the translations is the fol-
lowing. At issue is the rendering of the French ‘fille’, which means
loose woman/prostitute. The term is translated ‘gay women’ in Trans-
lation A: in late nineteenth-century English this meant a loose woman,
whereas in contemporary English the term means a lesbian. Clearly, the
later translators could not use the early rendering. Here is the passage
concerned:

Example 7

Nana 199. éprouvant cette sorte d’obsession qu’exercent les filles sur
les bourgeoises les plus dignes. [feeling the kind of obsession that
loose women inspire in the most worthy middle-class ladies.]
A 159. experiencing that kind of witchery exercised by gay women
over the most respectable ladies.

B 180. gave evidence of the absorbing curiosity with which notorious

courtesans are able to inspire even the worthiest old ladies.

C 150. feeling the sort of obsession which strumpets arouse in the

most worthy middle-class matrons.

D 195. revealing that obsessive fascination which courtesans exert on

the worthiest of ladies.

E 166. with the sort of obsessive fascination that the most respectable
women feel towards ladies of easy virtue.

Notice the rendering in Translation E, ‘ladies of easy virtue’. This phrase

is typical of Victorian expressions. Translators may not conform to the
modernizing trend, and may deliberately archaize in translating a source
text from an earlier period, in order to evoke a flavour of the period
or a feel for the character being described. In doing so, the translator
calls on his or her knowledge of target-cultural memory in terms of past
target-language usage that is still familiar today.
 Textual Memory 87

As far as translational norms are concerned, there has evidently been

a change with respect to the completeness and ‘faithfulness’ of a trans-
lation. Throughout Translation A there are a large number of minor
changes with respect to the source text, in particular substitutions
and omissions. And yet it is stated on the title page that this transla-
tion has been undertaken ‘without abridgment’. Today’s translational
norms would not accept such a translation as unabridged. Changed
translational norms as well as changed ideological mores influencing
literary norms both support the restoration of memory of the source
text through retranslations.

Heterogeneity and Individuality

Seeking explanations for retranslation, for why a new translation was
called for in terms of past–present dialectical relations in textual mem-
ory, seems to be obstructed by the presence of heterogeneity. Transla-
tions A and B present a significant case of heterogeneity in that they
belong to the same time period, the late nineteenth century, Transla-
tion B being produced only 11 years after Translation A. In principle
they should both be subject to Victorian mores, but as can be seen in the
earlier examples, Translation B does not shy away from sexual topics or
unflattering religious references, and therefore seems surprisingly mod-
ern. The explanation for this is to be found in the context of production
of Translation B. This translation was produced by the Lutetian Society, a
secret literary society that had a restricted membership composed of the
elite ruling classes. The aim of this society was to produce unexpurgated
translations of continental literature for the limited number of its mem-
bers; 310 copies of Nana were published (Merkle 2003). Private societies
were able to subvert the dominant ideologies and norms, since they were
not subject to censorship. Quite different conditions elicited the two
translations, even though they were produced in the same time period,
and it is the different contexts that explain the divergence between the
translations.
A further significant source of heterogeneity is when a translation
is inconsistent with its own regularities. As mentioned in the previ-
ous paragraph, Translation B is a close translation of the source text
and does not comply with Victorian niceties. However, on occasion the
Victorian mode of expression infiltrates the translation, as in Example 3
where ‘enceinte’ [pregnant] is translated by the Victorian expression ‘in
the family way’. Furthermore, like Translation A, Translation B is some-
times toned down to be less direct or explicit than the original text.
There are also instances of past translations ‘haunting’ present ones. In
88 Mapping Memory in Translation

Example 2, Translation C seems to be a throw-back to Translation A in

its bowdlerization. The rendering of Translation E in Example 7, which
brings a Victorian expression ‘ladies of easy virtue’ into the most recent
translation (to translate ‘filles’), could be interpreted as a ‘haunting’,
evoking memory of the past, and it is heterogeneous, since elsewhere
in the translation the translator uses ‘tart’ to translate the French word.
‘Ladies of easy virtue’ has an old-worldly quaintness about it, just like
Translation E’s expression ‘eminently bedworthy’ in Example 2. This
could illustrate a case of individuality, showing Translator E’s particu-
lar style of translation with an archaizing touch. Although Translators D
and E belong to the same contemporary period, Translator E’s style con-
trasts markedly with Translator D’s, since D tends to use contemporary
swear words (e.g. ‘fuck’) in the translation. This illustrates another type
of heterogeneity within the same time period.
The comparative examples from the retranslations display an almost
contradictory state: the particularity of specific contexts and styles,
and their non-particularity due to the fluidity between time periods,
contexts, styles and retranslations. Rather than thinking of memory
expressed through retranslations as a straightforward dialectic between
past source culture and present target culture, it needs to be conceived
as a relation of multiple presents and multiple pasts. This is why simple
explanations of retranslation such as gradual improvement over time
or shift towards target orientation (Berman 1995; Bensimon 1990) are
not tenable. As well as expressing power relations in society (such as the
influence of the powerful British middle class), and being influenced
by commercial motivations (it is texts that will sell well that are pub-
lished), the (re)translations of Nana can be seen as part of a memorial
textual system with its own manner of functioning. In this system tex-
tual versions are potentially limitless: the source text brings the past
into the future as it is reiterated in a new context, and it calls forth fur-
ther texts (including (re)translations) that link back to the earlier text.
Influenced by the new context, (re)translations retain or cancel – that
is, recall or relegate to oblivion – aspects of the text(s) they derive from
or are related to (Translation A, notably, cancelled various sensual and
sacrilegious references of the original text). Textual versions are related
to all other versions, such that they haunt/point forward to/evoke the
memory of others, creating a certain amount of textual heterogeneity.
Importantly, retranslations contribute (along with other remediations
such as artworks, television programmes and films) to producing and
perpetuating Nana as a transcultural memory site, and conversely the
 Textual Memory 89

continuing production of retranslations, reprints and new editions is

fuelled by the fact of the existing memory site.

Constructing Human Rights: A Network of

Historical Documents

Our second case study concerns the memory site of ‘human rights’. The
political right of democratic election and representation, the civil right
of an equitable justice system, the right of freedom of expression and
the right of a people to self-determination are just some of the human
rights that we recognize today, which evolved over a long period of
time through being worked out in a series of great historical docu-
ments dealing with rights. Among these documents the following are
prominent: Magna Carta (1215); the Scottish Declaration of Arbroath
(1320); the Petition of Right (1628); the English Bill of Rights (1689);
the American Declaration of Independence and Virginia Bill of Rights
(1776); the French Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen
(1789); and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). In this
centuries-long chain of texts, each document was inspired in its con-
tent by earlier documents in the chain; in other words, each document
depended on and embedded the memory of earlier documents. At the
same time, each document took the thinking on rights one step for-
ward, in much the same way that memory is not a matter of repetition
but of reconstruction in the new present context. The documents were
written in different languages, Latin, French and English; interlingual
translation played a vital role in facilitating communication of the doc-
uments to different linguistic constituencies. Mechanisms that were just
as important in the development of rights discourse were reworking of
a translated text in a new document, intralingual translation (resulting
in interpretative transformations in a new document in the same lan-
guage) and other types of contextual and material changes. From the
point of view of users of documents, whether the document was a trans-
lation from another language or not did not matter; they made use of
texts, reiterated and built on ideas embodied in texts, regardless of the
linguistic status of the texts on which they drew. It will be shown in this
section that interlingual translation is a significant process that com-
bines with other processes in the operation of textual memory. I first
introduce the network of great historical documents, before examining
the conditions and mechanisms of the gradual diachronic construction
of the ‘human rights’ memory site.
90 Mapping Memory in Translation

Magna Carta (1215) is the most famous of European medieval docu-

ments relating to rights. The Great Charter was drawn up by a group of
English barons who had grievances against King John. Among a number
of very specific issues concerning feudal administrative matters, there
are some ‘chapters’ (the name for the paragraphs of the text) that set
out general principles, and it is these that have had lasting political
importance. Provisions sought to place ‘free men’ (those of knightly
rank and some smaller landholders) under the protection of the law, to
enforce royal governance by counsel with great men of the land, and to
envision government as a compact between people and ruler (Turner
2003, 71–76). Memory of the words ‘freedom’, ‘liberties’ and ‘rights’
(English translation of the original Latin in Magna Carta) was to res-
onate down the centuries through reuse. Although the notion of rights
was to change from socially endowed to inherent to human beings,
the seeds of the notion were planted in this early text with its strong
statements, such as chapter 63:

Wheretofore We will, and firmly charge, that the English Church

shall be free, and that the men in Our kingdom shall have and hold
all the aforesaid liberties, rights, and concessions, well and peaceably,
freely, quietly, fully, and wholly, to them and their heirs, of Us and
Our heirs, in all things and places forever, as is aforesaid. (English
translation, Howard 1998, 54)

Like Magna Carta, the Declaration of Arbroath (1320), a letter to the

pope, was issued by a group of barons, supporters of King Robert Bruce of
Scotland. The noticeable memorial link with Magna Carta is the Scottish
barons’ assertiveness with regard to their king: they express their right
to depose the king if he does not protect their rights. Linda MacDonald-
Lewis (2009, 9) considers this a particularly important point with regard
to the development of democracy, since for the first time it expresses
the idea that a people can both choose a leader and depose him. In the
context of the excommunication of King Robert for violating a papal
truce and the instability of Robert’s position as king, the letter aimed to
mollify the pope and to do so in a way that depicted a unified Scotland
with King Robert at its head. In the context of the Anglo-Scottish war,
the letter requested that the pope should write to Edward II of England
to request that he leave the Scots in peace (Duncan 1970; Bruce 2007).
In the seventeenth century, rather than barons struggling with kings,
it was parliament that desired to ensure its role and curb the power of
the king. As a reaction to Charles I’s authoritative acts, the commons
 Textual Memory 91

presented the 1628 Petition of Right. Memory of Magna Carta was

embedded through the restatement of principles of the rule of law in the
Petition; due process of the law was extended to men of any status, and
liberties were elaborated on such that no one should be compelled to
give gifts, make loans or pay taxes to the king ‘without common consent
by act of Parliament’. With the institution of King William of Orange
and Mary, a new charter was debated to define both the king’s rights
and his subjects’ liberties in the 1689 Bill of Rights. Again, the memory
of previous charters informed this one, which made Parliament defini-
tively a branch of government superior to the monarch (Turner 2003,
157, 167). The Bill refers explicitly to its dependence on a tradition of
rights:

The said Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons in Parliament

assembled, for the ratifying, confirming and establishing the said dec-
laration [ . . . ] do pray that it may be declared and enacted that all and
singular the rights and liberties asserted and claimed in the said decla-
ration are the true, ancient and indubitable rights and liberties of the
people of this kingdom, and so shall be esteemed, allowed, adjudged,
deemed and taken to be.

In the eighteenth century, the settlers in North America clung fiercely to

their rights as Englishmen, guarding against arbitrary government and
promoting all citizens’ rights and liberties. The founding fathers embed-
ded memory of Magna Carta and subsequent English bills of rights in
their own documents, the Declaration of Independence, American state
constitutions and bills of rights (1776), and the subsequent Constitu-
tion and Bill of Rights of the United States (Turner 2003). It is also said
that Scottish Americans drafting the fundamental American documents
were influenced by concepts embodied in the Declaration of Arbroath
with regard to the questions of freedoms and sovereignty of the people
(Cowan 2003, 24). Certainly the reference to the English king’s tyranny
in the Declaration of Independence evokes the past history of Scotland
as portrayed in Arbroath.
As well as notions from the English tradition, the concepts expressed
in the American documents were a powerful guide or foil in the con-
ception of principles by the French National Assembly at the time of
the French Revolution (Marienstras and Wulf 1999). In particular, the
French Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen (Declaration
of the Rights of Man and the Citizen; 1789) drew direct inspiration
from the Virginia Bill of Rights of 1776, which embodied a clear sense
92 Mapping Memory in Translation

of the universality of human rights, to be taken still further by the

Déclaration. Rights were now considered to be ‘naturels, inaliénables
et sacrés’ [natural, inalienable and sacred]. The French Declaration of
1789 is recognized as having had a fundamental role in the area of
universal human rights. During the period of the French Revolution,
debates on rights and implementation of the Déclaration in practice
were explicit, heated and ahead of their time. From a starting point
where only propertied white Catholic men had rights, these debates
resulted in an impressive expansion of attribution of civil and politi-
cal rights in France to Calvinists, Jews, men of colour and men with no
property or wealth (Hunt 1996, 1–32).
Memory of the French Déclaration is reprised textually in what is
today the most important international document regarding human
rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the
United Nations in 1948.6 The corpus of texts described here constitutes
a network of texts in the Western tradition. It is important to recognize
that, perhaps contrary to popular belief, the UN Universal Declaration
of Human Rights (1948) was not simply a matter of the imposition of
Western thought on the rest of the world. The drafting commission
consisted of 18 members, all from different countries and cultural back-
grounds (Hoover 2013). A culminating point in the story of rights is the
agreement of the world’s nations that:

Recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable

rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of free-
dom, justice and peace in the world. (UN Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, preamble)

Conditions and Mechanisms of Memory Construction

This description has provided a sketch of relations and influences in a
series of documents related to rights over a long time period. We have
also caught glimpses of specific use of language in the texts and trans-
lation. Our focus will now be on elaborating how the interactions,
influences and development of texts and ideas took place, and how
memory of earlier texts was enabled and transformed.

Dissemination
A fundamental condition for the memorialization of texts is their prop-
agation. Memory cannot occur without people first having knowledge
of texts, and memory sites of famous documents and concepts are
built up through continued reiteration. Multiple dissemination of our
 Textual Memory 93

group of texts has taken place, greatly aided by technology in the form
of the printing press and more recently digital forms of storage and
propagation. With regard to crossing linguistic, cultural and temporal
boundaries, interlingual translation has played an important role.
For the medieval documents written in Latin, Magna Carta and the
Declaration of Arbroath, translation into the French and English ver-
naculars was necessary for wide dissemination: knowledge of Latin has
been restricted to an elite throughout the centuries, so vernacular trans-
lations have been essential in ensuring knowledge of and maintaining
memory of the documents. Let us consider early vernacular translations
of Magna Carta. J.C. Holt (1974) has identified a French translation of
Magna Carta produced in the same year as the original (1215), which
he says was used to facilitate communication of the charter’s content to
people of the English shires. At that time the ruling class in England was
French-speaking. Interestingly, the copy of this early French manuscript
translation was found not in England, but in France at St Giles’ hospi-
tal in Pont-Audemer, Normandy. This indicates that the text travelled
to France, and that the vernacular translation contributed to ensuring
familiarity with the text on the European continent. The French vernac-
ular version would also have been useful in making the text known in
Scotland, since at that time the French language brought by Norman
settlers had been adopted by the major native families with whom they
intermarried, the apogee of this hybrid culture being at about the turn
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (Duncan 1970, 6). M.T. Clanchy
(1993, 220) argues that the fact that there is no extant early English
translation of Magna Carta does not mean that it did not exist. On the
contrary, the king’s sheriffs and other officers were ordered to make the
charter known throughout the land, and there is evidence that public
readings were made of the charter in both English and French during
the thirteenth century. In later times, propagation of Magna Carta and
the Declaration of Arbroath in English-speaking countries has depended
heavily on English translation. The first translation into English of the
Declaration of Arbroath was published in 1689, and it is thanks to this
and subsequent English translations, reprints and reiterations that its
status became ‘mythic’. It is suggested that a copy of the first pam-
phlet translation of the Declaration of Arbroath reached the US colonies
(Cowan 2003, 14).
The important language combination for translation involving two
vernaculars in our network of documents is translation between English
and French. The revolutionary American documents (Declaration of
Independence and state constitutions and bills of rights) were translated
94 Mapping Memory in Translation

from English into French. Between 1777 and 1786, French transla-
tions of the state constitutions and bills of rights were published in
France at least five times7; the most influential publication was by La
Rochefoucauld d’Enville in 1783 (Marienstras & Wulf 1999, 1302, 1305).
French translations of American texts presented memory of the source
texts that had a powerful influence on ideology in the present new con-
text, and on formulation of the famous French Déclaration of 1789.
In the reverse direction, the most noticeable influence of translation of
the French Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen (1789) into
English has been its uptake in formulations present in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (1948). The supposedly final point in our
network of documents, the Universal Declaration, is not in fact the end,
because this document continues to be translated into all the world’s
languages in order to ensure dissemination of its message. To date it has
been translated into 389 languages. This translation effort is an indica-
tion of how the United Nations has aimed to make universal human
rights the standard of international justice today.
As we have seen, an intertexual memorial web can be traced, a progres-
sion of multiple documents and concepts regarding rights. Interlingual
translation (notably from Latin to English and French, and between
English and French) took on an important function in this process in
making texts widely available to broader audiences. Thus, interlingual
translation contributed to building transnational and transcultural
memory through enabling the influence of great historical documents
in different cultural and linguistic spheres, and contributed to the long
process of international construction of shared ideals with respect to
rights. Translation has participated not only diachronically but also
synchronically in keeping the texts alive: all of the texts in our net-
work are well known today, including those written many centuries
ago; they have been maintained in the current canon of memory due
to reiteration in various modes, often as translated texts.

Remembrance and Transformation

Remembrance depends on propagation and reiteration, but is also
dynamic in its content. As was stressed in the study of Zola
retranslations, memorial interpretation and reuse of past documents
take place through the prism of present concerns, possibilities and cir-
cumstances. People may be more or less conscious of the past–present
dialectic, in some cases deliberately manipulating presentation of the
past; in other cases they are unknowingly subject to present norms
and ideologies. In tracing the processes of memorial transformative
 Textual Memory 95

construction through texts, discussion will show how questions of fram-

ing interrelate with textual, language and translation issues. ‘Framing’
refers in general to the means by which the meaning of discourse is
constructed (see Baker 2006, 105–140). ‘Framing’ is used here more
specifically to designate meaning construction through the way in
which a text and concepts from an earlier time period are brought into
and used in a new social environment or a new material and textual
environment in a more recent time period. The various frameworks
and types of transformation have been discussed by translation scholars
before (as well as Baker 2006, see Lefevere 1992 and Harvey 2003). It is
interesting to examine here how they operate in a diachronic network
of texts and how they contribute to memorial construction.
What one may call ‘social framing’ provides a broad context for
imported documents. The specific shape that concerns and debates
about rights have taken depends on the particular social and intellec-
tual parameters of each era, and earlier texts have been reinterpreted,
remembered and used in those terms. In seventeenth-century England
during the power struggle that took place between parliament and
king, Magna Carta was used to back up the position of parliament.
In order to strengthen the idea of the rights and liberties of parliament,
seventeenth-century historians, lawyers and MPs asserted (erroneously)
that Magna Carta embodied a very ancient English law, an ancient
constitution that pre-dated the Norman Conquest. This was clearly a
case of the ‘invention of tradition’ (Hobsbawm & Ranger 1983). The
myth of ancient English rights and liberties was also espoused as their
heritage by eighteenth-century Americans, and this combined with
the fact that a number of colonists were freedom-loving religious dis-
senters (Turner 2003, 209) and also with an egalitarian colonial idealism
among the white population to produce a more universalistic outlook
in their documents. A very important influence in the eighteenth cen-
tury came from philosophies of natural rights. John Locke proposed
the idea that all men had a natural right to life, liberty and prop-
erty (although ‘men’ was limited to white propertied men); the French
thinkers Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Denis Diderot took a more univer-
salistic approach, proposing that men of all social stations had natural
rights. The Enlightenment philosophy of natural rights in combina-
tion with revolutionary spirit inspired the great French document of
rights to take the memory of earlier rights documents further (Hunt
1996). A strong contemporary influence for the United Nations declara-
tion of human rights lay in the atrocities committed during World War
II and the desire to prevent such events re-occurring. Finally, from the
96 Mapping Memory in Translation

seventeenth century and particularly in recent times, the call for auton-
omy in Scotland has revived reference to the right of self-determination,
of which an embryonic evocation occurs in the Declaration of Arbroath.
Remembering earlier documents through the prism of the present leads
to anachronisms: one example is considering that Magna Carta affirms
the right of trial by jury; another that calls for freedom and rights in
various historical documents concern the whole population (it was not
until the twentieth century that universal suffrage became an issue and
reality in Western countries). As a general movement over the centuries,
changing social and intellectual conditions have allowed the memory
of earlier documents embedded in subsequent documents to be trans-
formed in two fundamental directions: towards democratization and
towards universalization.
Specificities of the social environment are expressed or understood
in language, and in the language of texts. Perhaps the most insidious
case involving transformation is where the ‘same’ words have changed
meaning over time in new social contexts. There are several exam-
ples of this in the Declaration of Arbroath involving translation into
English. Mark P. Bruce (2007, 33) argues that the Latin ‘libertas’ in the
fourteenth-century context could mean state or individual freedom as
today, but more commonly meant special privilege proprietary to per-
sons in authority. The contemporary translation of the term as ‘freedom’
evokes democratic rights, and excludes the fourteenth-century complex
of meanings. A second example is ‘communitas’ or ‘community’. Again
in its current sense this term evokes a broad group of people, whereas at
the time the ‘community of the realm’, which is said to be represented
by the document, was a group of barons, of ‘wise men’ (Fergusson 1970,
28). Finally, ‘nacio’ in the fourteenth-century context refers to people
obedient to a king, with no specific sense of ethnic or cultural distinc-
tiveness (Broun 2003, 7), and therefore does not involve the sense of
today’s ‘nationality’. Overall, rather than concerning the rights of a lim-
ited number of barons, these linguistic features mean that Arbroath is
remembered as invoking the rights and liberties of the whole country
and its people. A conscientious translator/commentator might choose
to footnote the terms discussed here, but such is generally not the case,
particularly when sentences are decontextualized and transported into
popular contexts.
Another source of transformation in memorial construction of a text
is the greater flexibility of translations as compared to original texts,
which means that additions, deletions and transformations can be made
to translated texts; these may reflect an interpretation influenced by the
 Textual Memory 97

current social context, or even a deliberate manipulation to better fit

with a current agenda. The very first English translation of the Declara-
tion of Arbroath, in 1689, which set the trend for its entire subsequent
understanding, makes certain interpretative additions. A title page is
added:

A Letter from the Nobility, Barons and Commons of Scotland [ . . . ]

wherein they declare their firm Resolutions to adhere to their King
Robert the Bruce, as the restorer of the Safety and Liberties of the
People, and as having the true Right of Succession. (quoted in Bruce
2007, 139)

The intention of the translator/writer, George McKenzie, was to pro-

vide evidence at the time of the 1688–89 British monarchical crisis
that the crown of Scotland was not subject to England. Subsequently
the translated text was interpreted as supporting both nationalistic and
democratic rights (Bruce 2007, 140). Furthermore, the original docu-
ment was a letter to the pope, but from the seventeenth century it
came to be known as a declaration, a title that strongly frames the doc-
ument, conferring on it a genre, status and intention not part of the
original.
More subtle are partial reprises with transformations and expansions
including paraphrases of parts of the earlier document, changes that
again embed memory of the earlier text and transform it in line with
a new social context and its concerns and possibilities. Let us trace a
series of these transformations that operate through both intralingual
and interlingual translation. The chapter of Magna Carta that has been
the most influential for posterity, chapter 39, reads as follows in English
translation:

No free man shall be taken, imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, ban-

ished, or in any way destroyed, nor will We [the king] proceed against
or prosecute him, except by the lawful judgements of his peers or by
the law of the land. (Howard 1998, 45)8

Compare part of article seven of the Petition of Right (1628), which

contains explicit reference to Magna Carta and places a new importance
on the role of parliament:

and by the said Great Charter and other laws and statutes of this
your realm, no man ought to be adjudged to death but by the laws
98 Mapping Memory in Translation

established in this your realm, either by the customs of the same

realm, or by acts of parliament [ . . . ].

Compare also article eight from the Virginia Bill of Rights (1776), which,
through elaboration, places more emphasis on the individual’s rights
and incorporates explicitly the notion of trial by jury, often said to stem
from Magna Carta:

That in all capital or criminal prosecutions a man hath a right to

demand the cause and nature of his accusation, to be confronted
with the accusers and witnesses, to call for evidence in his favour,
and to a speedy trial by an impartial jury of his vicinage, without
whose unanimous consent he cannot be found guilty, nor can he be
compelled to give evidence against himself; that no man be deprived
of his liberty except by the law of the land, or the judgment of his
peers.

Sidestepping to a seminal passage in another document, as I mentioned

earlier the context of the American Revolution and eighteenth-century
political philosophy fostered a greater sense of universality of rights,
which is expressed in the first article of the Virginia Bill of Rights:

That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have
certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of soci-
ety, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity;
namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquir-
ing and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness
and safety.

The first two articles of the French Déclaration des droits de l’homme
et du citoyen embed memory of the American ideas, but with a more
forceful exposition by declaring that the protection of these rights is the
goal of governments:

Article 1: Les hommes naissent et demeurent libres et égaux en droits.

Les distinctions sociales ne peuvent être fondées que sur l’utilité
commune.
Article 2: Le but de toute association politique est la conservation des
droits naturels et imprescriptibles de l’homme. Ces droits sont la lib-
erté, la propriété, la sûreté et la résistance à l’oppression. (Rebérioux
et al., 1989, 111)
 Textual Memory 99

[Article 1: Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social
distinctions may be based only on common utility.

Article 2: The purpose of any political association is the preserva-

tion of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights
are liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression.]

In the French declaration we see a continued evocation of Magna Carta,

but flavoured by the local climate in the mention of duties of the
‘citoyen’ [citizen]:

Article 7: Nul homme ne peut être accusé, arrêté, ni détenu que dans
les cas déterminés par la Loi, et selon les formes qu’elle a prescrites.
Ceux qui sollicitent, expédient, exécutent ou font exécuter des ordres
arbitraires, doivent être punis; mais tout Citoyen appelé ou saisi en
vertu de la Loi doit obéir à l’instant.

[Article 7: No man may be indicted, arrested or detained except in

cases determined by the Law and according to the forms which it
has prescribed. Those who seek, expedite, execute or cause to be exe-
cuted arbitrary orders should be punished; but Citizens summoned
or seized by virtue of the Law should obey instantly.]

The final link in our series of excerpts from the network of documents
is the first sentence of the first article of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights (1948). One of the main drafters of the Declaration was
Frenchman René Cassin, who believed that the French rights tradition,
focused on the equal legal standing of all citizens, should be expanded to
the international level (Hoover 2013, 238). The first sentence of the first
article is very close to the first article of the French Declaration, except
that ‘men’ is replaced by ‘human beings’, reflecting the very different
twentieth-century social context with regard to attitudes towards and
roles of women, as compared with the eighteenth century:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
(United Nations 1948)

Another important feature of the social context of the mid-twentieth

century was the growing respect for the world’s cultural diversity, as
compared with an oppressive colonial mindset. This resulted in cos-
mopolitan participation in drafting of the UN Declaration. The vice-
chair of the drafting commission, Peng-Chung Chang, played a notable
100 Mapping Memory in Translation

role in discussions of the proposed content of the Declaration. Although

the concept of ‘rights’ seems indeed to stem from Western tradition and
was not introduced to China till the nineteenth century, there was a
very long Chinese tradition of reflecting on the ‘human’. Chang argued
for inserting into the text of the Declaration the classical Confucian con-
cept of , ‘ren’, which he translated literally as ‘two-man-mindedness’,
and which could be translated more felicitously in English as ‘the plu-
ral human’. The idea is that a human cannot be human without moral
relations with others. Consciousness of one’s fellow humans, respect for
others, social ties and duties to others are primordial. Chang’s influence
meant that as well as the individualistic tenor of the Declaration, there
is also some thinking such as that expressed in article 29, which begins:

Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and
full development of his personality is possible.

Liu stresses that not only was there plurality of thought in its gene-
sis, but the translation of the Declaration into 389 different languages
has meant that the document has traversed and been embedded with
multiple philosophical and cultural traditions (Liu 2014; Hoover 2013).
It is important to note that the social environment in a particular
country or cultural sphere is not monolithic: conflicting ideologies,
memories and traditions may co-exist and have an impact on linguis-
tic practices. In France today the memory of the French Revolution and
of its fundamental declaration, whose title contains the words ‘droits de
l’homme’ [rights of man], has been so strong and is such an important
part of French national identity that the expression ‘droits de l’homme’
as the standard way of expressing ‘human rights’ has become firmly
entrenched in the language and the culture. However, the expression
is challenged today by French feminists (see Delphy 2007), who sig-
nal its potential ambiguity and dislike the use of ‘homme’ [man] as a
generic term. Furthermore, in other parts of the world where the French
language is spoken as an official language, alternatives are being used,
notably ‘droits humains’ (literally ‘human rights’) and ‘droits de la per-
sonne’ [rights of the person] (see CEDAW session reports). It seems that
these alternatives to ‘droits de l’homme’ both stem from translation.
‘Droits humains’ is quite obviously a literal translation from English.
‘Droits de la personne’ reflects the desire not to give in to translationese,
to find an expression that sounds natural in French; it is an intralin-
gual translation that draws on the resources of the French language.
It is difficult to predict what will happen with this issue. Edward Shils
 Textual Memory 101

(1981, 206) points out the strong social tendency of reverence towards
the past, particularly towards ‘charismatic periods’ as the French Revolu-
tion surely was, with the Déclaration as its most prestigious document.
Yet traditions do change in response to contact with alternative tradi-
tions, and in response to changing circumstances and beliefs in society
(Shils 1981), as we have shown amply in the discussion of the network
of texts. In the case considered here, translation offers the possibility
of alternatives and choices that can challenge an entrenched linguistic
tradition; translation offers the possibility of reframing, providing a just
and invigorating renewal of the great French memory site. Thus, trans-
lation can participate in both the construction and the deconstruction
of the memory of famous documents and their concepts.
As well as social framing, a further type of framing that is pertinent
to the memorialization of texts is material framing. The original texts
and early copies of both Magna Carta and the Declaration of Arbroath

Figure 4.1 The Declaration of Arbroath of 6 April 1320 showing its material
appearance (National Records of Scotland, SP13/7)
102 Mapping Memory in Translation

are medieval parchments with wax seals attached to the bottom (see
Figure 4.1). Later print versions and print translations lose such fea-
tures of manuscript production. Bruce (2007, 139) argues, therefore,
that the texts become mechanically mass-reproduced objects, which
implies mass consumption and mass comprehensibility and relevance.
The material features of English print versions and translations thus
reinforce the broadening of representation of meaning of the baronial
charter and the baronial letter. So too do popular contemporary material
environments such as internet sites, fridge magnets and T-shirts.
With regard to fridge magnets and T-shirts referring to the Declaration
of Arbroath, it is certainly not the whole document that is cited, but just
one famous sentence in English translation:

It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fight-
ing, but for freedom – for that alone, which no honest man gives up
but with life itself. (Fergusson 1970, 9)

It is also the case for Magna Carta that the famous chapter 39, quoted
earlier, has been similarly cited and referred to alone out of its origi-
nal context. The fact that the famous sentences are widely known in
English and the memorialization of just one sentence facilitate univer-
salization of import in the modern era. The original context of medieval
England and medieval Scotland, their specific social systems and modes
of thought with their Latin documents, are easily forgotten when the
text is absent with the exception of a modern English translation
of one isolated sentence. Decontextualization and recontextualization
constitute co-textual framing, which is an important element in the
construction of memory (and partial forgetting) of past documents.
A very different case of recontextualization is provided by the French
Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen. In contrast to one
sentence being picked out and recontextualized, the whole of the
eighteenth-century document has been embedded in a twentieth-
century document of great importance in France, the current Constitu-
tion of 1958 (revised in 2008). The preamble of the Constitution opens
as follows:

Le peuple français proclame solennellement son attachement aux

Droits de l’homme et aux principes de la souveraineté nationale tels
qu’ils ont été définis par la Déclaration de 1789, confirmée et com-
plétée par le préambule de la Constitution de 1946 [ . . . ]. (Conseil
Constitutionnel 1958/2008)
 Textual Memory 103

[The French people solemnly proclaim their attachment to the Rights

of man and to the principles of national sovereignty such as they
were defined by the Declaration of 1789, confirmed and completed
by the preamble of the 1946 Constitution [ . . . ].]

The text of the 1789 Déclaration is appended to the Constitution.

The Déclaration, its concepts and its words have become fundamen-
tal in French politics, culture and tradition. This explains the resistance
described earlier in clinging to the expression ‘droits de l’homme’ in the
face of changing social norms and gender politics.
Recontextualization can also consist of framing through paratexts;
that is, complementary texts acting as commentary on the famous doc-
ument. There have been many studies done of Magna Carta in which
the text in English translation with or without the Latin original is com-
plemented by a commentary, or a whole book is written about Magna
Carta with versions of the document in the appendix. On a lesser scale
are the reprintings of the Declaration of Arbroath in original and English
translation accompanied by a commentary. In all cases the commen-
taries have reflected and influenced interpretation and memorialization
of the famous text, with an emphasis on the contemporary understand-
ing and appreciation of the text, and at the same time on its ageless
significance. Here, for example, is an extract from near the end of A.E.
Dick Howard’s 1998 commentary on Magna Carta, which precedes the
text in English translation:

The collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union and in its satellite

states in Central and Eastern Europe gave new hope to millions of
people long denied the fruits of constitutionalism and the rule of
law. Country after country, free from tyrannical oppression, turned
to the task of building a new order. Just as the barons’ resistance to
King John produced Magna Carta, so the liberal revolutions in the
postcommunist world saw new constitutions being written. So rich
is the tradition of the Great Charter, so readily identified with ideas
that have taken root far beyond English soil, that one should not
be surprised to find in those new constitutions formulas that bear
resemblance to the lasting ideals of Magna Carta. (Howard 1998, 31)

Finally, interlingual translations constitute a frame in their own right.

As we saw in earlier examples, a translation may hide the (old) ori-
gin of the text. Additionally, the micro level of particular renderings of
individual words must not be neglected, because renderings may have
104 Mapping Memory in Translation

important interpretative implications; it is words that frame our under-

standing of texts and of the world. There have been various discussions
among scholars about how best to translate certain passages of Magna
Carta. A great deal of discussion has taken place about the meaning
of the final phrase of chapter 39, and this discussion was sparked by
the English translation. Here is the Latin source text for the English
translation provided earlier:

Nullus liber homo capiatur, vel imprisonetur, aut disseisiatur, aut

utlagetur, aut exuletur, aut aliquo modo destruatur, nec super eum
ibimus, nec super eum mittemus, nisi per legale judicium parium
suorum vel per legem terre.

The problem is that the Latin ‘vel’ in the final phrase can mean ‘and’ or
‘or’. So it is not clear whether ‘the lawful judgements of peers’ and ‘the
law of the land’ are to be taken as jointly required, or as two alternative
procedures. Holt (1965, 227) argues that they were intended as loose
but not exclusive alternatives: men should be judged by their peers or
by some other method that was in accordance with the law of the land.
Consideration of interlingual renderings thus highlights interpretative
matters, and refines thinking on and memorial reconstruction of the
famous document.
The network of documents studied involves the domain of peo-
ple’s rights. These crucial concepts have been kept alive, reshaped and
developed through remediation, which institutes individual famous
documents, the network of documents and the fundamental concepts
as transcultural memory sites. Interlingual, intralingual, material and
co-textual translation/transformation have played an important role
in the dissemination of ideas and in the memorial construction and
deconstruction of the texts, involving shifts of meaning in new cul-
tural and historical contexts. Overall, the proliferation that is inherent
to remediation contributes to both the maintenance and the stability
of memory of a great historical document, as well as to change and
renewal in memory, which are necessary features of cultural survival
and development.

In this chapter I undertook two case studies examining multiple

retranslations of Zola’s Nana, and a series of famous documents that
figure in the history of (human) rights. Both cases illustrate phe-
nomena of textual memory, whereby memory of previous texts is
embedded in the present text according to various mechanisms: textual
 Textual Memory 105

reprise, allusion, further development of ideas or challenge through tex-

tual and/or ideational contrast. In this way series of texts are linked
together across long time periods. Interlingually translated texts partici-
pate along with original-language texts in these textual memory chains.
Interlingual translation plays the important role of propagating cultural
products and ideas across linguistic borders; and cultural translation as
explication and critical processual translation as transformation enter
into the production of new textual products in the memory chain.
5
National and Transnational
Memory

In a gradual progression across the chapters we have built up from the

individual to the social group, then to the nation and the transnational
sphere, first introduced in Chapter 4 through the topic of textual mem-
ory. This chapter explores more explicitly the topics of national and
transnational memory and identity. Memory is an important social phe-
nomenon because of its functions with regard to collectivities. Within a
sociocultural group, memory regarding certain events or people can take
on symbolic force, which as well as a signifying function and a didactic
or directive function also has a unifying function. Indeed, arguably the
most important function of memory is to uphold the cohesion and iden-
tity of the group, since communities are constituted in large measure
by a collective conception of their past. The past is viewed as both the
breeding and testing ground by today’s collectivities, and the collective
past confers durability on the social unit and its identity. The commem-
oration of traumatic events, memory of foundational events, traditions,
emblems and symbolic sites of the past powerfully evoke and define
communities to which they have given rise (Cubitt 2007). As ever we
must recognize a processual dialectic: identity is sustained by remember-
ing, and what is remembered is shaped by the assumed identity (Gillis
1994, 3).
The collective conception of the past may be embodied in group
structures and norms, in formal commemorative occasions and mon-
uments, or in stories about the group past. Discourse and narrative
play an important role in the construction of national identity. Hall
(1996) explains that the ‘narrative of the nation’ provides a set of sto-
ries, images, landscapes, scenarios, historical events, national symbols
and rituals that are said to represent the shared experiences, sorrows,
triumphs and disasters that give meaning to the nation. The narrative

106
 National and Transnational Memory 107

places emphasis on origins (a foundational story and original people),

continuity, tradition and timelessness. Politicians evoke glorious narra-
tives of the past in order to galvanize the nation, but more recently
governments have also faced up to memory of the nation’s less glori-
ous past in making apologies to victims of war or colonization (Olick
2007); as mentioned in the Preface, in 1996 the British queen vis-
ited New Zealand and apologized for the crown’s not honouring the
Treaty of Waitangi in colonial treatment of Maori people’s land. Levy
and Sznaider (2010, 5) argue that memory politics of human rights
norms has now become a prerequisite for state legitimacy. Such devel-
opments have no doubt come about through recognition being given
to alternative narratives. Contestation of narratives may occur when
there is unresolved disagreement in a community over interpretation
of and attitudes towards a past event; group thinking is not uniform.
Contestation may refer to a situation where within a group the dom-
inant or current memory or interpretation of an event is challenged
by an alternative interpretation being put forward, a ‘counter-memory’.
Contestation can also refer to the situation where several different
groups in society promote different interpretations, different memories
of the past. A minority group, for example, may assert an alternative
version of the past (Brownlie 2013).
Despite the increasing diversity within the national unit as a result of
global movement and communication of people and thus the poten-
tially increased diversity of memory cultures within the nation-state
unit, the concept of national identity remains a powerful force today,
both politically and culturally. In his review of explanations of the
national unit and nationalism, Smith (1999) proposes that what gives
nationalism its power are the myths, memories, traditions and symbols
of heritages and pasts, because they have strong popular and affective
dimensions, creating a bond in the community. A particular national
identity may be possible because the diverse peoples in terms of dif-
ferent regions and immigrant populations experience a sense of unity
through adopting common knowledge, common memory and shared
affectivity regarding the past. Our era, which is more ready to accept
complexity and multiculturalism, also accepts multiple and hybrid
memory narratives. Smith (1999, 87) says that diversity in national
memory is downplayed in ‘times of danger’, and at other times has the
beneficial effect of raising community self-consciousness and allowing
regeneration.
Highlighting diversity within the construct of the national unit may
open onto a different way of conceiving memory. In a powerful article
108 Mapping Memory in Translation

questioning the basis of the field of memory studies, Erll (2011) argues
that too much attention has been given to national memory in a static,
self-contained, homogeneous framework. She proposes that instead the
focus should be on memory as movement. Erll (2011, 12) affirms that
in the production of cultural memory people, media, mnemonic con-
tents and practices are all in motion. Memory has in fact always been
constituted through movement across territories: consider, for example,
the wide influence of the ancient Greek thinkers; in our contempo-
rary world the ease of movement of people and cultural products as
well as electronic communication have increased this phenomenon.
All types of memory in fact involve movement. With respect to social
units, not only are they fluid and interacting, but social memory can
only be created through motion between minds and media, and the
movement of ideas among individuals in the group. As for other types
of memory, the individual mind partakes of intersecting memories of
many groups; textual memory involves travel and transformation; and
of course electronic memory relates to flows of data and algorithms.
In this chapter I consider the notions of both national memory and
transnational memory, which consists of shared memory across national
borders. Transnational memory may be created in various ways. First,
memories of shared experiences can be acknowledged, such as memo-
ries of similar experiences of people from countries that were involved in
the same war. Secondly, knowledge of the history and historical cultural
products of one country can be propagated in another, thus creating a
shared border-crossing memory. Thirdly, in a comparative mode mem-
ory of events that occurred in one geographical and temporal space
may be linked notionally to events in a very different geographical and
temporal space, such that commonalities can be recognized despite the
differences; this is Rothberg’s (2009) ‘multidirectional memory’. Inter-
national movement and contacts including colonization, migration,
trade and various types of communication have been a source of such
sharedness. Sharedness does not mean sameness of understanding or
manifestation, since movement across time and space necessarily results
in some hybridization.
With regard to the spreading of knowledge and of cultural products
transnationally, translation into different languages has played an essen-
tial role. In Chapter 3 I mentioned early examples of vast civilizational
transfer of scientific and philosophical knowledge through translation
in Baghdad and Toledo, and I discussed translation of feminist texts
involving both ideas and textual practices as playing a central role in
the development of a transnational feminist ideological, writing and
 National and Transnational Memory 109

translation affinity group. In Chapter 4 we saw that processes of textual

memory involving translation can be a basis for transnational memory,
exemplified in the cases of translations of Nana (shared transnational
memory of a cultural product) and the network of rights documents
(shared transnational memory of ideology and great historical docu-
ments). The focus in this chapter is particularly on the play between
the national and the transnational, and also on synchronic situations
as well as diachronic. Importantly, the genre of the historical novel as a
vector of memory is examined.

Transnational Memory with National Inflections:

The Case of Scott

The case study for this chapter concerns the author Sir Walter Scott
(1771–1832) and his works. Scott was chosen for several reasons. He was
an author whose novels were translated into a great many languages;
this translation abundance was reinforced by further remediations in
various other forms such as theatrical versions. The novels were histori-
cal novels and they played an important role in popularizing this genre.
The type of content of the novels combined with the abundance of their
translation and remediation offers an exemplary case for studying the
role of translation in spreading knowledge of other people’s histories.
Furthermore, the case offers an example of how translation contributes
to constituting widespread transnational memory of cultural products.
Scott also allows us to pursue the human rights theme, since he was
often taken, particularly by readers of the translations, to be a defender
of less powerful ethnic groups and cultures.
Walter Scott was the most famous and celebrated English-language
author of the early nineteenth century. Many consider him to be the
founder of the ‘historical novel’, although this mode of writing has
antecedents before the nineteenth century, and Scott synthesized ele-
ments of what had gone before (De Groot 2010, 12). Most of Scott’s
novels dealt with the fairly recent past of Scotland, but his best-known
novel today, Ivanhoe (1819), dealt with medieval England. Scott’s genre
of historical novel was innovative in that it combined detailed descrip-
tion of customs, artefacts, the environment and life at the historical
time; imaginary ordinary people as the main characters with famous his-
torical figures such as kings in the background; and a strong adventure
story component (Wesseling 1991). His historical novel was a vehicle
for conveying historical knowledge that was complementary to histo-
riographical writings at the time in that it brought to life the daily
110 Mapping Memory in Translation

lives of people. A narrative form is used by both historians and writ-

ers of historical fiction, and narrative (structuring information as a story
with a beginning, middle and end) seems to be powerful with respect to
memory, since a narrative sticks in our mind – it is memorable. Rigney
(2010, 347) argues that, unlike the historian who must follow protocols
regarding evidence, the novelist has the freedom to invent characters
and incidents, to simplify the complexity and messiness of historical
actuality through selection, to modify and reorganize historical detail
in order to fit into a vibrant tale, to focus on only a few characters
and thus bring them to life and allow the reader to empathize with
them, to give closure to events, which appeals to the reader, and to add
a moralizing dimension. In addition, the novelist deploys expressive,
creative and specifically literary skills that give aesthetic value to the
work. Such features of the historical novel attract and hold the atten-
tion of readers. Rigney (2004, 391) reaches the following somewhat
startling conclusion about the power of the literary form: ‘Memories
crafted by [literary] writers may prove more tenacious in practice than
those based on facts which have not been submitted to the same creative
reworking’.
Furthermore, Rigney (2004, 389) argues that literary works – by virtue
of their poetic and fictional properties – have a distinctive role to play
not only in reawakening memories in later generations, but also in
arousing interest in histories that are not ‘one’s own’. Literary texts can
thus be important channels for broadening the horizons of what one
considers one’s own heritage; in other words for creating transnational
memory, which occurs mainly via interlingual translation.
From 1805 Scott was already known for his poetry, but it was his his-
torical novels that were to have a much more profound influence. His
first historical novel, Waverley (1814), was mass produced using the new
printing technology of the time and it was marketed to a wide audi-
ence. Novels were the first mass-produced literary genre in the early
nineteenth century and became widely available and popular; at that
time in Britain people generally read novels from circulating libraries
(De Groot 2010, 17). Waverley was highly successful, as were Scott’s
subsequent novels, both in Britain and abroad. This is evidenced by
publication sales, the number of theatrical adaptations, the number of
collected editions, and the speed and intensity with which his work was
translated. There was a veritable ‘Scottomania’ in Europe in the early
nineteenth century. Rigney (2012, 12–13) outlines several key concepts
that explain the memorial functioning of Scott’s work, in which trans-
lation participates. ‘Mobility’ means that literary works may migrate
 National and Transnational Memory 111

across media and reading constituencies; ‘procreativity’ is the capacity of

the work to generate new versions in the form of other texts and media;
‘monumentality’ means that literary compositions provide stable points
of reference in calibrating collectively held values; and ‘appropriation’
reflects the desire of different groups and later generations to adapt the
author’s work to their own ideological, creative and aesthetic needs.
We shall see evidence of these properties in the following discussion.
Scott’s novels have been translated into at least 36 languages. The
database at the National Library of Scotland lists more than 3000 ver-
sions in languages other than English. Every new translation is an act
of recollection that allows the novel to circulate in new cultural arenas
(Rigney 2012, 35, 79). Many of the translations are into European lan-
guages: in Pittock’s work (2006a) on the reception of Scott in Europe,
there are articles about his impact in France, Spain, Catalonia, Italy,
Germany, Hungary, Austria, Russia, Slovenia, Czechoslovakia, Poland,
Denmark, Norway and Sweden. An interesting aspect of the diffusion
of Scott in translation was that some translated versions were read
widely in various countries, notably the French and German trans-
lations. Furthermore, the French translation served as a pivot, for
example all the early Russian translations of Scott’s novels were actually
translations from Defauconpret’s French versions.1 Another interesting
cross-language translation phenomenon was stage adaptation: among
other examples, Italian and German theatre adaptations of Scott’s nov-
els were translated into Danish (Nielsen 2006, 264). The most common
translation difficulty encountered with regard to Scott’s work was con-
veying the dialect and sociolect distinctions. Using varieties of Scots
and English was important for the themes of his novels in portraying
Britain as multicultural and multilingual. In translation the distinctions
were abandoned, or otherwise reproduced partially in different levels of
formality or using local dialects such as Tuscan and Jutlandish (Pittock
2006b, 6). As well as European languages, Scott has been translated into
other languages, including recent versions in Turkish and Vietnamese
(Rigney 2012, 80). There are a number of Japanese translations, since in
Japan the popularity of Scott has always been high; the ‘Japanese Friends
of Abbotsford’ have contributed to the maintenance of Scott’s memory
through supporting the Abbotsford Trust, which manages the heritage
site of his former home (Abbotsford website). Translation released the
mobility of Scott’s texts in allowing dissemination to many new reading
constituencies.
In his novels Scott generally respected established historical facts, but
as a creative artist he sometimes altered history for the sake of the plot.
112 Mapping Memory in Translation

An example of this is his compression of time in Ivanhoe, bringing the

1066 Norman Conquest of England notionally closer to the twelfth cen-
tury, no doubt in order to combine a dramatic plot theme (Normans
versus Saxons) with popular twelfth-century chivalry. In the dedicatory
epistle to Ivanhoe, Scott argued that fables and frivolities in historical
fiction were pleasing to readers and would seduce them into embarking
on a more thorough study of the past. Even if they only read the novels,
they had learnt something. The novels are thus intended to combine
entertainment with a didactic role, teaching about past events and soci-
eties. Just like the original texts, the translations of Scott’s works had
and still have a didactic role. The knowledge of Scottish and English
history and peoples together with their past customs and landscapes is
made accessible through the novels to people from other cultural and
linguistic backgrounds, thus creating elements of shared transnational
memory. Such a didactic function of the novels in translation becomes
all the more apparent when the new readers are likely to have very little
relevant prior knowledge. Morris-Suzuki (2005, 64) reports that the early
Japanese translators of Scott’s novels were inspired by ‘an educational
passion to make Western civilisation [ . . . ] comprehensible’. In order
to compensate for the readership’s lack of prior knowledge, historical
explanations were added in the Japanese translations. In translating
Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor, Tsybouchi Shôyô added the following
explanatory passage in his translation published in 1880:

This narrative takes place in a kingdom called Scotland. Scotland is in

the northern part of the island of Great Britain, and was originally an
independent kingdom. However, beginning from about the 1600s it
united itself with the kingdom of England. (translation from Japanese
quoted in Morris-Suzuki 2005, 64)

Another context in which readers may be lacking in knowledge and

where the work may play an educational role is translations for a
young readership. In a recent abridged children’s version in French of
Ivanhoe (Scott 2009), the translator/editor has added a large number
of footnotes: 198 brief footnotes in a small-format book of 251 pages.
The notes give explanations for terms and expressions associated with
historical and cultural elements of the Middle Ages in England (and else-
where). These include information on religious practices, social ranks,
professions, arms and armour for jousting, clothing, money, castle archi-
tecture, heraldry, hunting, food, transport and leisure activities. Here are
some examples of the footnotes:
 National and Transnational Memory 113

Un anchorète: un moine ou ermite qui vit dans la solitude [anchoret:

a monk or hermit who lives alone]

franklin: noble, aristocrate [franklin: noble, aristocrat]

haubert: longue cotte de maille [hauberk: long coat of mail]

barbacane: mur semi-circulaire protégeant la porte d’un fort [barbi-

can: semi-circular wall protecting the gate of a fort]

Although some of the explanations may be wanting in conveying the

actual complexity of English medieval social structures and practices,
they still give a good general idea of the foreign cultural item. The trans-
lator/editor also used notes to point out two historical errors in Scott’s
text. The hybrid balance of fictional and non-fictional in the histori-
cal novel is weighted more towards the non-fictional in this adaptation
through the addition of the notes. The French adaptation thus acts as a
means of passing on memory to young people, not only of the iconic
novel and its famous characters, but also of life in a time long past, as
well as knowledge of English history.
Scott’s novels not only present detailed descriptions of past customs,
practices, artefacts, places and events, but necessarily also offer the
author’s point of view. Scott’s overall ideology, influenced by Scottish
Enlightenment historians, was one of respect for past traditions (Scottish
Highland; Anglo-Saxon), but belief in ethnic reconciliation and future
progress achieved through modernizing (the eighteenth-century union
of Scotland and England; the twelfth-century integration of Saxon into
Norman ways; Pittock 2006b, 2). Scott’s particular presentation of past
events had the effect of influencing readers’ perceptions of the past. The
novel Ivanhoe is telling in this respect. Simmons (1990, 91) recounts that
at the time of its publication, 1819, knowledge of the medieval period
in England was very limited, even among the well educated. She says
further that all later nineteenth-century depictions of the relationship
between Saxons and Normans either directly or indirectly owe a debt to
Ivanhoe. Most interestingly, this comment applies not only to novelis-
tic depictions but also to writings of professional historians: Macauley,
Thierry, Carlyle and Freeman. Scott’s novel inspired the first full-length
monograph study of Britain in the Anglo-Norman period by the French
historian Augustin Thierry, Histoire de la conquête de l’Angleterre par les
Normands (1825). It was a highly successful book with four editions by
1833; it was translated into English, and subsequently influenced British
historians and writers. Although Thierry studied chronicle sources, the
114 Mapping Memory in Translation

organizing principles of the book were not derived from those sources
but from Ivanhoe: namely the Saxon/Norman divide (in class, race, tem-
perament and ideals), the continued sense of Saxon identity throughout
the Anglo-Norman period, and the belief that progress was achieved by
a Saxon undercurrent to the Norman power structure (Simmons 1990,
92). For our purposes it is interesting to note the monumentality and
procreativity of Scott’s work, as well as the powerful influence of ideas
about the past circulating in different genres, in different countries and
in different languages, often facilitated by translation.
Some of the readers of Scott’s works in translation were writers,
who were inspired to follow his model and write Scottian historical
novels themselves using their own local subject matter. The Scott-
inspired historical novels in different languages embodied genre-based
textual memory of his oeuvre. Scott’s literary influence on writers was
felt widely throughout Europe; cases of specific emulation of his style
of historical novel occurred among French, Belgian, German, Italian,
Austrian, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Slovenian and
Scandinavian writers (Pittock 2006a). The process through which this
happened can be categorized as a phenomenon of multidirectional
memory (Rothberg 2009). As mentioned previously, this is the type of
transnational memory construction whereby people link memory of an
event that is familiar from their own history with memory of an event
from a very different geographical and/or historical era. Often the effect
of this is to reinforce a particular interpretation of the local memory.
Scott espoused the national essentialism of his day whereby a nation
was linked to an essence of which its history was a part; he combined
this with picturesque descriptions of national locations. A number of
his novels depict the relations between a smaller/less powerful/more
traditional national or ethnic group and a larger/more powerful/more
modern national or ethnic group. Scott provided templates that served
as analogues for other national and ethnic situations in which a ‘small’
nation or ethnic group was striving to establish its distinctiveness within
a larger dominant framework.
Monnickendam (2006) recounts Scott’s role in Catalan nationalism.
Barcelona was the centre of publication for Scott’s novels in the Iberian
peninsular. In Catalonia Scottish history as depicted by Scott was seen
to have analogies with Catalan historical events and situations. After the
War of Spanish Succession in 1714, a multi-kingdom model was replaced
by a highly centralized unified state; the Catalan parliament was abol-
ished, and Castilian replaced Catalan as the official language. Scott
depicted Jacobite attempts to recover the British throne, the persecution
 National and Transnational Memory 115

and the accomplishments of the Scottish Covenanters, and the martyr-

dom of Scottish patriots after the battle of Culloden. He was perceived
as a writer who stirred nationalist emotions. Furthermore, his interest in
the Middle Ages reminded the Catalans of Catalonia’s time in history as
a medieval power and cultural centre in its own right. The Catalan lit-
erary revival known as the Renaixença dates from about 1859 with the
inauguration in Barcelona of the Floral Games, a revival of the medieval
literary tradition of a poetry festival. With regard to Catalan novelists of
the revival, they were inspired by Scott to find subject matter in their
own local and national history and environment, and to espouse the
notions of renovation and progress for Catalonia.
Other European countries where nineteenth-century Scott transla-
tions provoked multidirectionality of memory with nationalist over-
tones were Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia. When Scott’s works
first became known between the 1820s and 1840s, Hungary was subor-
dinate to Austria, so the novels were initially read in German translation
prior to the production of Hungarian translations. Hungarians per-
ceived Scott as a purveyor of national myth and the Scottish Highlands
were compared with Transylvania; the region and its history emerged
as a symbol of national unity and persistence. Hungarian historical
novels influenced by Scott were often set in sixteenth- and seventeenth-
century Transylvania. The early novels were inseparable from the rising
Hungarian nationalism of the 1820s and 1830s, whereas from the 1840s
Scott’s preference for political compromise was in evidence among writ-
ers who supported the Austrian-Hungarian Compromise (Szaffner 2006).
By 1830 in Poland seventeen of Scott’s novels had been translated into
Polish, some from the French translations, others from the original
English. Scott had an enormous influence on the movement of Polish
romanticism, as well as on Polish identity through the rekindling of
the legend of the sixteenth- to eighteenth-century Samartian tradition
of Polish knights. The chivalric Sarmatian myth flourished as a literary
theme in the years 1830–40 due to the popularity of Scott’s literary style
and the linking of ancestral history to patriotism (Modrzewska 2006).
For Czechs too, taking their cue from Scott’s novels, the past as well
as landscape was used as an engine of discovery and development of
national identity that participated in the Czech National Revival, a pro-
tracted process of cultural and political emancipation of the Czechs from
Austrian domination (Procházka 2006).
In making analogies with and finding inspiration in Scott, appropri-
ation quite often involved interpreting his work in a way that he may
not have intended or in a way that was not justified by his actual text.
116 Mapping Memory in Translation

Pittock (2006b, 5) summarizes a number of European uptakes in stating

that:

In societies struggling for independence against regional powers or

colonial oppressors, with suppressed languages, disordered civic soci-
eties and no historiography save that of native resentment and
patriot resistance, the radical undertow in Scott’s writing could seem
more prominent than it did to a British audience.

The flip-side to the enthusiastic wholesale uptake of Scott’s works was

censorship. Certain authoritarian regimes in Europe kept a tight control
on the content of literary works, preventing the publication of those
deemed unacceptable. In Spain at various times during both the nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries Scott’s work was censored for religious
reasons, since some aspects were considered anti-Catholic – Scott was a
sturdy Protestant (García-González & Toda 2006). During the first half
of the nineteenth century in Austria, Metternich’s Restoration politics
aimed to suppress philosophical and political ideas that were believed to
support an oppositional spirit. The interpretation of history became an
important political issue. Seventeen works by Scott were judged harmful,
since they were considered to contain passages that could do dam-
age to state religion, the order of the state (monarchy) or morals. The
Austrian editions in German were thus published with a large number
of passages cut or reformulated (Bachleitner 2006). Some translations
involved modifications by the translator, which acted as a kind of self-
censorship. Defauconpret’s early French translations of Scott tailored
the novels to a Catholic Restoration readership, upholding constituted
conservative authority in contrast with Scott’s habit of presenting views
from both sides (Barnaby 2006).
In the twentieth century rather extraordinary cases of reframing
of Scott’s novels are found in the former communist regimes. Such
reframing takes place through comments and interpretations provided
in prefaces, footnotes and epilogues. In a study of prefaces in East
German Scott translations (published between 1949 and 1990), Bautz
(2006) points out that the prefaces present Scott as a great writer, where
greatness is defined as promoting communist ideals of literature and
society. What is to be admired in Scott’s novels from the communist
point of view is the combination of realism, accurate and serious rep-
resentation of the people, and the portrayal of the people’s role in
historical progress. In the prefaces to Ivanhoe, for example, the novel
is presented as a struggle between ‘the people’ who guarantee progress
and the oppressive aristocratic Normans who must be opposed; Scott’s
 National and Transnational Memory 117

promotion of compromise as a solution to historical antagonisms is

ignored. Romantic aspects in his writing are considered to support the
realistic import, as the romantic stirs the reader’s empathy. In the var-
ious examples given we see that the way in which Scott’s works were
presented and re-presented in translation created a particular memory
of the author and his works for the new readership.
In many cases reframing and new interpretation of Scott’s novels
were coupled with a change in genre and medium, remediation. As
discussed earlier and demonstrated in previous case studies, in order
for a ‘memory site’ to be developed, multiple remediations are neces-
sary (Erll 2009). In the present case, in order for Scott and his novels
to become durable items, ‘monuments’ in cultural memory, multiple
re-presentations of the novels or aspects of the novels were necessary.
The amount of reiteration of Scott’s works was enormous, not only
numerous editions and translations, but also productions in different
media. Remediation often concerned particular aspects of the novels
such as modified versions of the plot, single scenes, selected charac-
ters, novel titles and names of characters. The multiple remediations
show that Scott’s novels embodied a high level of procreativity (Rigney
2012, 12).
Scott’s writing lent itself to remediation because of its evocative visual
descriptions and exciting narratives. It could even be said that he helped
imagine the future paintings, book illustrations and stage productions
of the nineteenth century, and the television series and films of the
twentieth century, based on his novels. In the nineteenth century, as
an example, scenes from Ivanhoe were painted more than 100 times, and
the rage for theatre productions was such that almost all of Scott’s novels
were put on stage within months of being published. Theatre provided
a platform for recycling the novels and giving them new life. Theatri-
cal activities also extended outside the professional theatre: theme balls
and ‘tableaux vivants’ (friends dressing up as characters in a novel and
depicting a scene) were popular pastimes. Arguably the most fascinat-
ing re-enactment example of remediation was the fashion in the United
States of medieval-style jousting tournaments from the 1840s to the
1880s, which as a newly invented tradition became an important part
of Southern identity: Ivanhoe was certainly both a monumental point
of reference for a set of chivalric values, and a source of inspiration for
newness. Translations of Scott’s novels inspired stage productions and
theatrical activities throughout Europe. The most enduring of the con-
tinental stage productions are the Italian operas, particularly Lucia di
Lammermoor, composed by Donizetti in 1835, and today a staple of the
modern international operatic repertoire (Rigney 2012).
118 Mapping Memory in Translation

Figure 5.1 Pub Ivanhoé, Honfleur, France

Another mode of the deep embedding of Scott and his works in cul-
tural life and memory was the use of his novels’ titles and characters’
names in everyday contexts such as names of places, ships, railways,
companies and even dinner sets. This extension of Scott to the every-
day material world occurred massively in English-speaking countries; for
example, there are towns, districts and streets called ‘Waverley’ (the title
of Scott’s first novel and the name of the series of novels) in Australia,
New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, South Africa, India and the United States
as well as England and Scotland (Rigney 2012, 1). Most interestingly
for our purposes, we find a similar phenomenon involving translation:
place names on the European continent that evoke Scott and his char-
acters, such as an eating establishment in the French town of Honfleur
called ‘Ivanhoé’ (see Figure 5.1). This demonstrates how Scott’s works
have become part of the shared cultural memory of European countries.
However, despite the existence of similar phenomena of remediation,
it can be argued that the memorial impact is not the same everywhere.
Rigney (2012, 188) considers that memory of Scott and his works played
a specific role for collective identity of the Anglophone cultural sphere
in the second half of the nineteenth century:

[Scott’s] memory helped articulate collective identity in Scotland,

the British Isles, the United States, and the Empire, seen as dis-
tinct if overlapping spheres within the larger framework of an
 National and Transnational Memory 119

English-speaking world. [ . . . ] although Scott’s writings were enor-

mously influential in France (as in other parts of Europe), he never
acquired the same role in that country as a figure of collective
memory as he did in the English-speaking world.

Rigney (2012, 14) affirms more generally that cultural memory of great
writers and their works plays an important role in collective identity.
Since the usual paradigm for conceiving of literature in the nineteenth
century and still today is very much nation-based, it is logical that mem-
ory of Scott could not play the same role in continental Europe as it did
for Britain and its former colonies. Furthermore, Scott’s subject matter
for most of his novels was Scottish and English history. We could say
that while they are transnational, the memory cultures of former British
colonies hark back to the national memory of Britain as a source of
roots. In contrast, other memory cultures such as those of continental
European countries share a memory of Scott and his novels, but do not
link this so strongly to English/Scottish national memory. This distinc-
tion has an impact on how translations and foreign-language versions
in other media of Scott’s work may be undertaken, since target-culture
national memory and traditions enter powerfully into translation and
production choices. The injection of continental operatic tradition into
French and Italian opera versions of Scott’s works may explain why they
were met with some reticence in London when first performed, in addi-
tion to dislike of the liberties taken with Scott’s narratives (Fuhrman
2005). Another case in point is the very different nineteenth-century
cultural context of Japan, where appropriation of Scott’s texts was
shaped by traditional Japanese cultural forms and the corresponding
aesthetic preferences of the readership. Translators often abridged and
rewrote texts, pruning unfamiliar detail and potentially incomprehen-
sible dialogue, and producing works that were closer to more familiar
forms of Japanese historical narrative. The Japanese title for Scott’s The
Bride of Lammermoor translates as A Tale of the Spring Breeze (1879). Even
more surprising are the illustrations in this Japanese version, which
depict the characters Lucy Ashton and Edgar Ravenswood and other
seventeenth-century Scottish characters as heroes of a Japanese samurai
romance (Morris-Suzuki 2005, 64).

The Influence of National Memory on a Translated Abridgement

Let us examine again Hachette Jeunesse’s recent abridged French version
Ivanhoé (Scott 2009) for young people in order to investigate further the
issue of the influence of national memory in the adaptation of what has
120 Mapping Memory in Translation

become a transnational cultural item or ‘object of recollection’ (Rigney

2010, 351). When writers of abridged versions choose content of the
original text that might be omitted or condensed, it is likely that pas-
sages not contributing to advancing the plot might be targeted. Further
to this, I would like to propose that, whether consciously motivated or
not, some omissions in the Hachette Jeunesse text as well as modifi-
cations can be related to differences in national cultural memory. The
adaptation downplays two themes that are important in British cultural
memory: the myth of the Norman yoke, and the question of reconcil-
iation of races. The text also downplays a theme that does not accord
with French cultural memory: a negative view of the Normans and the
French.
We shall first consider the myth of the Norman yoke. Used figura-
tively, the word ‘yoke’ refers to something regarded as repressive or
restrictive. ‘Yoke’ was first applied to the Norman Conquest by medieval
chroniclers. At the core of the narrative of the Norman yoke is a highly
negative attitude towards the 1066 Norman conquerors of England as
oppressors. As early as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, English
verse chronicles expressed the idea that the Normans had enslaved and
impoverished the English with lasting effect. This shows the impor-
tance of traumatic events for memory, but can be considered historically
inaccurate because, despite the initial violence and harshness of the
invaders, the Normans brought benefits to England and its people. The
myth continued in different versions and was used for various political
purposes throughout the centuries. In the nineteenth century Ivanhoe
contributed a strand to the myth in proposing the historically question-
able four generations’ longevity of the Normans versus Saxons hostile
divide. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries the myth is still
present, perhaps most strongly in the numerous film and television ver-
sions of ‘Robin Hood’ in which Robin defends the poor Saxons against
the cruel Norman sheriff of Nottingham (Brownlie 2013). The fact that
the myth keeps coming back in transformed ways demonstrates its cen-
trality to British cultural memory, and the reason why ‘Normans versus
Saxons’ is a foundational theme in British cultural memory is that it is
part of British identity (Worth 1995). So naturally, when we consider the
French system and French cultural memory, the myth of the Norman
yoke and the novel Ivanhoe just do not play the same role.
The central theme of long-lasting ethnic enmity is stated right at the
start of Scott’s Ivanhoe as follows:

A circumstance which greatly tended to enhance the tyranny of

the nobility, and the sufferings of the inferior classes, arose from
 National and Transnational Memory 121

the consequences of the Conquest by Duke William of Normandy.

Four generations had not sufficed to blend the hostile blood of the
Normans and the Anglo-Saxons, or to unite, by common language
and mutual interests, two hostile races . . . (1895 [1819], I, 5)

In the Hachette Jeunesse version this is what is said:

Depuis la conquête de l’Angleterre par Guillaume, quatre générations

n’avaient pas suffi pour brasser le sang des vainqueurs avec celui
des vaincus, ni pour fondre par la communauté de la langue et des
intérêts deux races ennemies . . . (7)
[Since the conquest of England by William, four generations had not
sufficed to mix the blood of the victors with that of the conquered,
nor to join the two enemy races by commonality of language and
interests]

This is in the second paragraph of the book, and no prior information

is given about these issues. The vagueness of the text with no specific
mention of who Guillaume is, and no specific mention of who the two
enemy races are, is noticeable. The start of the French adaptation sets the
tone for the rest of the book: there is less precision, interest and empha-
sis on the ethnic conflict in comparison with Scott’s original text. This
can be contrasted with an English abridgement for young children pub-
lished in the United States, Canada and Britain by Dover (Scott 1999).
This version is very sketchy and highly abridged (76 pages including
illustrations). Nevertheless, it explains the ethnic situation at the start.
Here is a passage from the first paragraph of the Dover edition:

[Prince] John meant to become king of England himself, and to do

so he befriended the Norman noblemen who lorded over most of
the land. He allowed them to make miserable the poor, hard-working
Saxon people whose ancestors had once ruled England. (1)

In the Hachette Jeunesse text, de-emphasizing the ethnic division also

results from omissions. There is omission of a number of comments
and complaints by the narrator or by Saxon characters about the cur-
rent disinherited status of the Saxons and the bad behaviour of the
Normans. An entire chapter (vol. I, chap. 22 in Scott 1895 [1819]) that
shows most directly the potential cruelty of Norman characters is omit-
ted in the Hachette Jeunesse edition. In this chapter the Norman Front
de Boeuf is about to torture Isaac over red-hot iron bars in order to exact
money from him. Some dialogues in Scott’s original that contain spirited
122 Mapping Memory in Translation

rhetorical exchanges, giving insight into ethnic relations, are omitted

and replaced by a brief descriptive summary in the Hachette Jeunesse
text. In Scott’s work, the ethnic conflict, the Saxons’ angry or sad feel-
ings about their depressed status and pro-Saxonism are often elaborated
in riddles, oaths, poems and songs. These items do not advance the story
but add greatly to its atmosphere and emotion; they are omitted from
the Hachette Jeunesse adaptation, as they are from other adaptations.
Even if adaptations must by nature involve omissions and may always
tend to omit rhetorical items, there is still a choice of what is omitted
and what is retained or reproduced in a simplified manner. In contrast
to the Hachette Jeunesse version, the English Dover adaptation clearly
maintains the ethnic division throughout. This is done by using simple
language, such as repeated recourse to the terms ‘Norman’ and ‘Saxon’
to describe characters and events. Each side also plainly shows its opin-
ion of the other with such phrases as ‘Saxon dog!’ and ‘Norman devil!’
Care in reproducing the ethnic divide in this adaptation is no doubt
due to its importance not only in British memory, but as the heritage of
former British colonies.
‘Norman oppressors – Saxon oppressed’ does not represent the whole
story of the construction of the ethnic relation in the nineteenth cen-
tury. Glorification of the Saxon King Alfred and associating him with
Queen Victoria led to the movement of Saxonism, promoting the Anglo-
Saxons as superior (Simmons 1990). A third path was also depicted in
the nineteenth century: reconciliation (Briggs 1985). And this is the
path shown by Scott at the end of Ivanhoe. His Normans and Saxons
reconcile with the vision of forging a strong and resilient English (and
British) people through this union (as mentioned earlier, reconciliation
was a general tendency of Scott’s outlook expressed in his novels). Given
the insistent Normans versus Saxons theme throughout Ivanhoe, this
ending might come as a surprise to the reader, but there are in fact signs
of complexity in the body of the work. This concerns chiefly the activi-
ties of the initially disguised King Richard, who at the end of the novel is
the major agent of reconciliation. Although supposedly on the ‘Norman’
side, Richard is depicted as aiding and hobnobbing with the Saxons, the
most remarkable episode of which is his forest meal with Robin Hood.
Richard’s adventures in Ivanhoe may be pure romance, but they play
an important role in the novel as being symbolic of reconciliation in
the country. Omissions in the Hachette Jeunesse version of Ivanhoé of
details of Richard’s encounters and empathy with the Saxons, such as
with Friar Tuck and Robin Hood, lead to the disappearance of prepara-
tory signs of reconciliation. In contrast, the English Dover adaptation
 National and Transnational Memory 123

contains the convivial scene where Richard shares a meal with Robin
Hood. The retention of this scene in the short Dover adaptation sig-
nals the importance of the reconciliation theme for an English-speaking
audience.
Downplaying themes in the Hachette Jeunesse adaptation that are
important in British/English-speaking memory and identity probably
occurs because they do not have the same significance in the French
environment. It could be considered that a further exemplification of
the influence of differences in national memory is the omission in the
Hachette Jeunesse adaptation of instances found in Scott’s text of the
association of Norman conquerors with the French and French language
in a negative light. In contrast to the Hachette Jeunesse adaptation, if we
look at the English Dover adaptation, on the very first page there is no
hesitation in creating a negative link between French and Normans: ‘the
hard rule of the French-speaking Normans’ (1). In Scott’s novel there are
epigraphs at the start of each chapter. Chapter 8 in Volume 2 (Scott
1895 [1819]) features the attack by Locksley and his Saxon yeomen on
the Norman castle of Torquilstone in order to free several Saxon char-
acters who are unjustly imprisoned. The epigraph for this chapter is the
beginning of a famous speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V: ‘Once more
unto the breach, dear friends, once more . . . ’. The epigraph suggests a
parallel between the Saxons attacking the Norman castle in Scott’s tale,
and the English attacking the French in the besieged town of Harfleur,
an historical event that took place during the Hundred Years’ War in
1415. Over the centuries there are numerous instances when the British
bring up the Norman Conquest at stressful moments in Franco-British
relations. In British cultural memory the Conquest tends to be associ-
ated negatively with the French as rivals or enemies in later historical
periods (see Brownlie 2013). Naturally, French cultural memory is quite
different on this point, and thus it is not surprising that a reference like
Henry V’s speech is omitted in an abridged French version of the novel.
This factor reinforces the general tendency to omit epigraphs in abridged
versions. In sum, translations are instrumental in creating transnational
memory, shared knowledge of the past and of cultural items. And yet
concurrently, national identity is constructed as distinct through spe-
cific cultural memory, and the nation’s cultural products such as literary
works are embedded in this memorial specificity. A translation may well
be affected by the fact that it is produced in a different environment
with its own and different national cultural memory, and this seems to
have been the case with the Hachette Jeunesse French abridgement of
Ivanhoe.
124 Mapping Memory in Translation

Memory is about reconstruction of the past in the present, and as

time marches on memory evolves: literary works are reinterpreted and
re-evaluated in the light of contemporary perspectives, and the rep-
utation of authors changes too. Scott had been the most celebrated
English-language author of his time, whose works were read in many
countries of the world both in English and in translation. But Scott’s
fortune changed. From about 1870 his novels were considered to be
suitable for light reading or for young readers. This trend paralleled
the production of abridged children’s versions of his works, particu-
larly Ivanhoe. In Pittock’s (2006a) survey of Scott’s reception in Europe,
mention is made of Spanish, German, Hungarian, Czech, Russian and
Danish abridged versions of Scott’s works for children or teenagers.
By World War I the decline was irreversible with regard to Scott’s role
as a memory icon: the canon of his works was reduced to the prin-
cipal Scottish novels and Ivanhoe (whose memory was also prolonged
by twentieth-century television, film and computer game remediations);
Scott’s poetry disappeared completely from view. As Rigney (2012, 211)
writes: ‘cultural marginalization and collective amnesia [surrounded]
the figure that had towered over the 19th century’. This was true for
both English-speaking and other countries. The once great memory site
had lost its vibrancy.
There are a number of characteristics of Scott’s novels that made them
suitable as works for youngsters: they were considered ‘healthy’, ‘clean’
and ‘uncomplicated’; they contained exciting adventure stories; and
they focussed on narrative of events rather than the characters’ psychol-
ogy. The novels lost their allure for adults due to changing preferences
in literary style and changing philosophies. In the twentieth century
new literary styles favoured expression of psychological and experien-
tial depth, and philosophies of optimistic progress (such as Scott’s) were
seriously questioned. Nevertheless, Scott’s memory lives on in varied
and often unacknowledged ways today. The genre of historical fiction
(often leading to filmed versions) that he was instrumental in founding
remains very popular. Rigney (2012, 224) also argues that Scott con-
tributed to the contemporary memory habitus whereby it is considered
that representing troubled pasts is a step towards dealing with them
and moving forward. Everyday reminders of Scott remain, particularly
in his homeland, such as the central train station in Edinburgh called
Waverley, and the immense monument and statue of Scott in Princes
Street, not far from the station.
 National and Transnational Memory 125

This chapter has covered the topics of national and shared transnational
memory in relation to translation. Translation is naturally linked to the
transnational, since often translation is a matter of allowing texts to
traverse linguistically differentiated national borders, and thus open up
a work to a linguistically new readership. The case study of the trans-
lation of Walter Scott’s works provides insights into the genre of the
historical novel as a powerful vehicle of memory. The study shows how
interlingual translation can have a vital role in spreading knowledge of
an author’s works, as well as knowledge of an innovative literary genre,
and of the work’s historical, cultural and ideological content. Scott’s
works were remediated with great profusion into various languages, gen-
res and media in different countries, and provided inspiration for local
fictional production. What was often achieved was a transformation in
line with local specificities, and thus shared transnational memory with
national inflections.
6
Traditions

Chapter 5 covered the topic of national memory. Quite often ‘tradition’

is associated with a national group as a feature of memorial identity, but
traditions may of course be related to smaller or larger social groupings.
Tradition can be defined in its most elementary sense as a ‘traditum’,
anything transmitted or handed down from past to present. Further
to this we tend to think of traditions as habitual practices and beliefs
derived from the past with a certain symbolic and normative force (Shils
1981, 12); they are part of cultural memory. Traditions differ from habits
in that they are self-conscious, involving cultural formations such as
special texts, rituals, ceremonies, performances, monuments and arte-
facts. Such cultural objects and practices that keep the past alive are
invested with powerful ‘mnemonic energy’ (Assmann 1995). Traditions
may be associated with dominant institutions that regulate practice, or
they may be instead a matter of common knowledge whose author-
ity derives from the volition of individuals across time (Howard 2013).
In the case study for this chapter powerful institutions are involved, the
United Nations and the Saudi Arabian government, but the traditions
also have widespread grassroots support.
Traditions may be traced to a long-distant, perhaps undateable past,
or they may have more recent origins. Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983)
famously introduced the notion of ‘invention of tradition’, whereby
traditions that appear to be old are often quite recent in origin; a
salient example is pageantry surrounding the British monarchy that
was ‘invented’ in the late nineteenth century. So the link with the past
may be real or alleged. In his discussion of tradition, Soares (1997) puts
emphasis on the idea of a community sharing respect for a common
past, and the desire for continuity but without slavishness. Contrary
to popular belief, traditions are in fact malleable and evolve over time,

126
 Traditions 127

as well as giving rise to variants. Shils (1981) explains that traditions

change due to both endogenous factors (changes originate due to revi-
sions by those within the tradition) and exogeneous factors (changes are
influenced by external factors; that is, contact with divergent ideas and
social practices from other social groups). When one tradition comes
into contact with another, there may certainly be resistance to change,
but the durable outcome could be that one tradition becomes dominant,
or the traditions may be amalgamated (Shils 1981). It is through move-
ment of peoples and writings that traditions spread; religious traditions
are a notable example with the creation of syncretic forms. Transla-
tion, of course, plays an important role here. The immense worldwide
translation of the Bible, for example, has been essential in propagat-
ing Christianity. Folk-tales are another traditional form that has spread
through translation (Tymoczko 1990, 50).
A common way in which the notion of tradition has been linked to
translation is to study different histories in different parts of the globe
concerning translation and interpreting. The usage of the term ‘tradi-
tion’ is broad here, since as well as referring to customary practices with
symbolic force, it is also employed as a synonym for the history of prac-
tices in certain places. In The Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies,
Baker and Saldanha (2009) admit that in the 250-page section on tra-
ditions, the division into linguistic and/or geographical communities
is arbitrary to a large extent; for example, there are sections on very
large groupings, ‘African tradition’ and ‘Arabic tradition’, in contrast
with other sections on specific countries such as ‘Bulgarian tradition’
and ‘Dutch tradition’. Nevertheless, a panorama has been provided,
which allows global patterns to be traced. Baker and Saldanha (2009,
xv–xviii) enumerate several aspects among the various histories that
present both similarities and differences. First are the profile and status
of translators and interpreters. Often they have belonged to ‘minority’
groups of some sort: native Indian servants acted as interpreters in the
New World; in the nineteenth century in Egypt the best-known liter-
ary translators were Christians, often of Lebanese or Syrian origin; and
today much of the community interpreting and translation in countries
such as Britain, Sweden, the United States and Australia is undertaken
by migrants. In other contexts the profession was sometimes hered-
itary and was revered: in pre-colonial times interpreting was carried
out by African ‘wise men’, and between the fifteenth and nineteenth
centuries translation was undertaken by ‘dragomans’ in Turkey who
were held in high esteem. The second aspect is the roles of translators
and interpreters, which have sometimes been multiple. In the colonial
128 Mapping Memory in Translation

context translators and particularly interpreters took on a wide range of

roles that went beyond linguistic mediation, such as acting as guides,
explorers, brokers, diplomats, ambassadors and advisers on local affairs.
Thirdly, incentives for translation activity have been various in differ-
ent contexts. In addition to the incentives of spreading religions and
enhancing scholarship, a major incentive more typical of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries was the establishment of official bilingualism
in countries such as Canada, Finland and Belgium, which spawned
large-scale translation of administrative and legal documents. Finally,
particular types of translation and interpreting are found in different
traditions. In pre-colonial African societies, for example, interpreters
translated African drum language into words; and in Greece intralin-
gual translation between ancient and modern Greek has figured more
prominently than interlingual translation.
With respect to the style of translation, a historical approach reveals
that a translation fashion in one place may be influential in other
places: an example of this was the influence in England of both the
seventeenth-century French tradition of the ‘belles infidèles’ and the
later nineteenth-century German source text–oriented reaction against
the French domesticating style. Tymoczko (1990, 54) makes a strong
general argument that fixation on text-based literacy has led over the
last several hundred years to an ideal of ‘exactitude’ or ‘objectivity’ in
translation practice. This ignores the strong oral tradition in various
parts of the world in earlier times and still today in Africa, for example,
in which translated texts must adapt to the standards of the receptor
culture in order to remain alive and to function successfully.
My case study in this chapter does not take up the notion of transla-
tion histories; rather, I consider a situation of contact (primarily textual)
between very different cultural traditions. When divergent traditions
come into contact, conflict may result. In such cases communication
plays a vital role: as Jean Monnet, founding figure of the early European
institutions, once said: ‘Mieux vaut se disputer autour d’une table que
sur un champ de bataille’ [It’s better to fight around a table than on
a battlefield]. The case study involves significantly divergent traditions:
the seemingly incompatible points of view with respect to the role of
women in society in conservative Islamic tradition, specifically in Saudi
Arabia, as contrasted with the feminist tradition in the ‘West’. This diver-
gence is worked out in a communicative encounter within the United
Nations human rights mechanisms that displays elements of conflict.
It is therefore useful to examine concepts and approaches in the field of
intercultural conflict communication.
 Traditions 129

Stella Ting-Toomey and John Oetzel (2013a, 635) consider that

‘intercultural communicative conflict’ arises when there is an implicit
or explicit emotional struggle between persons of different cultural
communities over a perceived or actual incompatibility of cultural ide-
ologies and values. According to Ting-Toomey (2012), often it is not the
substantive matter that is at stake in an encounter, but the perceived
challenge to group membership identity, and this challenge becomes
greater when persons of highly different traditions are inter-relating
in a conflictual situation. In intercultural conflictual encounters the
communicative relationship can be seen in terms of threats and fear:
fear of a difficult experience; fear of being dominated; fear of negative
evaluation by the other group resulting in diminished self-concept; the
threat of inaccurate rigid (negative) stereotypes; and threats to one’s
world views and value systems (Ting-Toomey 2012, 284).
The case study considers the effectiveness of written communication
via translation in a situation of conflicting traditions, effectiveness being
defined as achieving mutually shared meanings and outcomes satisfac-
tory to both parties through a courteous exchange. Communicative
effectiveness evokes the necessity of communicative competence. For
Ting-Toomey (2012, 279), ‘intercultural conflict competence’ refers to
the careful management of emotional frustrations and conflict inter-
action struggles arising primarily from cultural, linguistic or ethnic
group membership differences. The most important component of
competence is knowledge. Knowledge allows a person to perceive the
interlocutor’s point of view, and to perceive their own with a more
critical eye (Ting-Toomey 2009, 103). Knowledge includes cultural and
linguistic knowledge (particularly of terms for culture-specific features)
and the knowledge of socio-pragmatic dimensions of the other lan-
guage/culture such as the means of conveying respect (Ting-Toomey
2012, 283). The second component of competence is mindfulness. This
means being attuned to one’s communication assumptions, cognitions
and emotions, at the same time as being attuned to the other’s commu-
nication assumptions, cognitions and emotions. The third component
is constructive conflict communication skills, the ability to manage a
problematic interaction situation appropriately, effectively and adap-
tively via skilful verbal and non-verbal communication behaviours
(Ting-Toomey 2009, 104). The notions of communicative effective-
ness and competence find an echo among translation scholars: both
Katan (2004) and Pym (2012) consider the translator to be a ‘cul-
tural mediator’ whose mission is to facilitate cooperation between
participants through improving cross-cultural communication, and for
130 Mapping Memory in Translation

Pym (2012, 150) the key ethical task of the translator is to mini-
mize ‘communicative suffering’ by minimizing misunderstandings that
impede cooperation.
Since the case-study communicative encounter involves negotiating
different cultural traditions through translated texts, the question of
‘cultural translation’ is salient. With regard to translating culture-specific
elements, Tymoczko (2007) finds that often problems have been dealt
with in a fairly superficial manner. Working in a linear fashion, trans-
lators have made decisions about obvious ‘culturally specific items’,
normally mentions of material items and customs, which appear in
the text. Tymoczko (2007, 232) proposes, on the contrary, a holistic
approach that focuses first on the text as a whole and on its broad
cultural underpinnings (for example, ideologies, fundamental concepts
and practices in a culture) as the background to micro-level issues. Katan
(2004, 171) also considers that the translator as cultural mediator should
understand the source culture ‘frames of interpretation’ embedded in
the source text, and produce a translation that would create a com-
parable set of frames for the target reader. As for translation strategies,
Tymoczko (2007) advocates that the translator must assume his or her
agency in taking responsibility for decisions in the particular context at
hand. The translator has the important power to introduce new things
into the target culture. Possible techniques include expressing a foreign
concept in a target idiom, resulting in the creation of hybridity or neo-
culturation (Ortiz 1947) and introducing foreign terms accompanied
by explanation, or on the contrary no explanation in order to shock
the reader with strangeness. An advocate of explanatory annotations
in the translation is Anthony Appiah Kwame. Kwame (1993) proposes
that if the purpose of the communication is to promote understanding
of cultural differences and a genuinely informed rather than superfi-
cial respect of others, what is needed is ‘thick translation’. This consists
of a translation that includes explanations, annotations and glosses in
order to locate the foreign text in a rich cultural and linguistic context.
MacIntyre (2009), however, warns that adequacy of explanation may
be very difficult to attain when dealing with ‘rival traditions’ involving
incompatible beliefs, because not only are traditions expressed through
specific historically developed linguistic expression relating to a broad
complex cultural context, but a rival belief logically entails rejection of
the other incompatible belief.
The particular case study was chosen because it concerns two highly
contrasting traditions; one might say ‘rival traditions’ (MacIntyre 2009).
It seemed, therefore, that the issues of translation of a text embodying
 Traditions 131

one such tradition into the language of the other tradition would
be acute. Furthermore, the case is interesting in that it involves
bi-directional translation; that is, the interchange of texts and transla-
tion of traditions in both directions. Another point of interest is that
the case relates to a debate in the field of human rights: the role of ‘cul-
tural rights’ such as the right to preserve specific cultural traditions. The
stance of the United Nations is that cultural rights are pivotal to the
recognition and respect of human dignity, as they encompass impor-
tant freedoms connected to identity such as access to cultural heritage,
but the protection of cultural diversity cannot be invoked to infringe
on human rights guaranteed by international law. In this light uni-
versal human rights must be promoted in various cultural contexts by
encouraging new thinking and cultural practices, for example by means
of ‘cultural negotiation’ (Shaheed 2010). The case study concerns an
episode of such cultural negotiation.

CEDAW and Saudi Arabia: Background

The case study presented in this chapter concerns the most recent peri-
odic review communications (2007–08) between the CEDAW committee
(the committee monitoring the implementation of the UN Convention
on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women) and
the representation for Saudi Arabia, a state party signatory to the Con-
vention. The international Convention on the Elimination of All Forms
of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) was drafted in the late
1970s, and was shaped by the thinking of the time; that is, ‘second-wave
feminism’ in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and
Western Europe. ‘Second-wave feminists’ called stridently for women to
have equal opportunities and equal rights with men. Equality was to be
embedded in the law and in practice with regard to education, the work-
place and the home environment. Second-wave feminism called for
women to be independent and to have complete control over their lives.
This perspective dominated the drafting of the Convention, although
a few concessions were made to representatives of Muslim countries
involved in the drafting discussions, such as the deletion of reference to
‘unmarried mothers’ (Krivenko 2009, 112). The Convention establishes
an international bill of rights for women, and an agenda for action by
signatory countries to work on implementing women’s human rights as
stipulated within it (OHCHR 1979). The Convention was adopted by the
United Nations General Assembly in 1979, and now has 99 signatories
(OHCHR 1979).
132 Mapping Memory in Translation

As we have seen, CEDAW represents primarily a transnational

‘Western’ feminist tradition. Let us now consider the contrasting tra-
dition from Saudi Arabia, an Islamic state whose laws stem from the
holy Qur’an and Sunnah (the prophet Mohammed’s traditions and prac-
tices). Islam is a transnational religious tradition, but has many varying
interpretations and implementations in different countries. Conscious
of their nation’s position as the cradle of Islam, Saudi Arabian rulers
and religious scholars have supported a conservative view of Islam.
With regard to the woman’s role, verses in the Qur’an indicate that a
husband’s responsibility is to provide for his wife and children (surah
2.233), that wives and husbands have different rights and duties towards
each other, and that husbands have a degree of authority over their
wives (surah 2.228). Customary practices in Saudi Arabia reinforce male
authority over women. Under Saudi law every Saudi woman, no mat-
ter her age, has a male guardian whose permission or guarantee of
the woman’s identity is normally needed for many aspects of her
life, including bringing a court case, undertaking business transactions,
gaining employment, travelling, marrying and undergoing surgery
(Al-Rasheed 2013, 15). From a traditional Saudi perspective, male
guardianship may be regarded as a means of cherishing and protecting
women, and preserving their dignity. From the CEDAW perspective, it
is regarded as an unfair reduction of the adult woman to the state of an
inferior being with restricted rights, legally a minor. However, there are
signs of change in Saudi Arabia, such as participation by women in the
Shura Council (advisory council to the king) since January 2013, and
the opening up of work avenues previously prohibited to women such
as practising law (in October 2013 the first women in the kingdom were
licensed to practise as lawyers). Nevertheless, according to a Thomson
Reuters Foundation expert survey published in November 2013, Saudi
Arabia remains the ‘third-worst country to be a woman in 22 Arab states’
(McDowall 2013).
Despite what seem to be glaring differences between Saudi traditions
and CEDAW stipulations, Saudi Arabia signed up to the United Nations
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against
Women in 2000, with an important reservation: ‘In case of contradic-
tion between any term of the Convention and the norms of Islamic
law, the Kingdom is not under obligation to observe the contradictory
terms of the Convention’ (OHCHR 1979). For Muslims Islamic law is
God-given, and is thus above legislation laid down by man-made insti-
tutions (Alhargan 2012a, 3). The general reservation safeguards against
criticism from Saudis who feel that the Convention strays away from
 Traditions 133

Islamic principles. The adherence of Saudi Arabia to CEDAW in 2000

is due in part to international pressure from NGOs and from the EU
(Alhargan 2012b, 611), and corresponds with the state’s general desire to
modernize and attract international legitimacy from that time onwards
(Al-Rasheed 2013, 21).
There have been some significant criticisms of the CEDAW mech-
anism. It is considered that the Convention is seriously undermined
by the allowance of reservations made by signatories; 21 states have
made reservations asserting the precedence of Islamic law (Krivenko
2009, 114). Reservations stem from the tenor of certain articles, some
of which can indeed be questioned. CEDAW is open to the criticisms
aimed at 1970s feminism (see Chapter 3), such as lack of sensitivity to
the diversity of women’s lives around the world. Article 5, for example,
calls for traditional practices that are an impediment to women’s rights
to be modified; anthropological studies have demonstrated the high
complexity of many customs that may seem detrimental to a Western
observer, but whose elimination may cause additional harm (Krivenko
2009, 108). Other criticisms are practical: the Convention contains no
clear enforcement procedure; and the state party reporting system is
not efficient, since state parties often fail or are tardy in reporting to
the CEDAW committee, and importantly submit reports that are inac-
curate (Rosenblum 2011, 6, 9). Nevertheless, critics agree that CEDAW is
an important achievement in women’s human rights, which has aided
activists in introducing international norms in locally appropriate ways.
The CEDAW committee is a panel of specialists on gender issues from
various different countries that monitors the situation and progress in
each state party’s country through a process of periodic reviews. The
review aims to be a ‘constructive dialogue to improve implementation
of the Convention by the State party’ (UN 2009, 70). The procedure for
the periodic review is the following:

1. The state party provides to the CEDAW committee a periodic

report on progress made towards implementation of the CEDAW
Convention.
2. The CEDAW committee also receives reports from relevant UN bodies
and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including country-
level organizations.
3. The committee sends a list of written questions (requests for clari-
fication or further information) arising from its reading of the state
party report to the state party authors of the report.
4. The state party responds to those questions in writing.
134 Mapping Memory in Translation

5. The state party then sends a delegation to Geneva to meet with

the CEDAW committee and answer further questions from the
committee orally.
6. Written summary records of the Geneva meetings are produced.
7. The last stage is that the committee formulates final written com-
ments and recommendations, which are disseminated within the
state party country.

This is quite a complex communicative event. Furthermore, all of these

various communications require translation or interpreting, in the case
of Saudi Arabia between Arabic and English. The United Nations’ lan-
guage policy allows official communications to be expressed in any
of its six official languages (English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic,
Chinese), and it provides translation and interpreting services for those
languages. In the case study discussed here the working language of the
CEDAW committee is English, and the language of written expression of
the Saudi Arabian representation is Arabic, so each party in the commu-
nication event writes and reads in different languages, communicating
by means of translation. At each stage the two parties are therefore using
different texts, an original and a translation. In itself this may not be
problematic at all, but as is well known with regard to cultural mat-
ters, the task of the translator often presents difficulties (Katan 2004;
Tymockzo 2007; MacIntyre 2009). In a standard translation situation,
the difficulty may arise because the original intended audience of the
source text has a very different cultural background from the new audi-
ence of the translation. In our case study, it is known in advance that
the source text will be translated for the purposes of an audience with a
different cultural background; therefore, it is interesting to note that in
spite of this prior knowledge, cultural issues constitute an obstacle.
The main material examined for this study was the Combined Initial
and Second Periodic Reports of Saudi Arabia (CEDAW 2007a), Responses
to the List of Issues and Questions raised by the committee about those
reports (CEDAW 2007b) and the Concluding Comments of the com-
mittee (CEDAW 2008a). On occasion I also used for supplementary
information a Shadow Report submitted as part of proceedings (Saudi
Women for Reform 2007)1 and Summary Records of the Geneva meet-
ings (CEDAW 2008b).2 Following a target-oriented research procedure
(Toury 1995), I placed myself in the position of the English-language
reader, such as the CEDAW committee members, reading the English
versions of the documents. Table 6.1 sets out key features of the texts
studied.
 Traditions 135

Table 6.1 CEDAW periodic review documents studied

Title of Communicative aims Language status of the

document English texts studied

Combined The Saudi report first provides CEDAW articles are given
Initial and general information about the in their original language,
Second Periodic economic, political and legal English. The text is
Reports of States situation in Saudi Arabia, then otherwise a translation
Parties: Saudi gives information relating to from the Arabic original.
Arabia each article of CEDAW, with
the aim of showing how the
situation in the country
conforms to CEDAW.
Responses to the The Saudi text provides The CEDAW committee
List of Issues additional information and questions are given in
and Questions statistics in response to their original language,
CEDAW committee requests for English. The text is
clarifications and further otherwise a translation
information. from the Arabic original.
Concluding The CEDAW committee This CEDAW committee
Comments of presents positive aspects of the document is in English,
CEDAW situation in Saudi Arabia with and will be translated
respect to CEDAW, then into Arabic for the
presents 38 areas of concern purposes of dissemination
and 23 recommendations. in Saudi Arabia.

In reading the English versions of the state party Reports and Reponses
to the List of Issues and Questions, I experienced difficulty in under-
standing the meaning of certain sentences, and discerned what seemed
to be anomalies in the text. I wondered whether these issues were due
to the fact that the texts stemmed from divergent cultural traditions,
or whether they were related to translation (from the original Arabic),
or both of these sources. I also examined the English concluding com-
ments of the CEDAW committee. A second question I wished to consider
was whether communication between the parties was as effective as it
could be.
Since I do not know Arabic, in order to gain access to the Arabic orig-
inals and Arabic translations, I consulted in a joint meeting two female
Saudi Arabian students studying at Master’s and PhD levels in the United
Kingdom (referred to here as Informant A and Informant B).3 Both stu-
dents come from the city of Jeddah on the west coast of Saudi Arabia.
They informed me that the city is ‘liberal’ with respect to women’s
136 Mapping Memory in Translation

roles compared with other regions towards the centre and south of the
country, so that the two students were open to discussing questions
relating to women that may have been met with reticence or refusal of
discussion by women from elsewhere. The two Saudi informants exam-
ined both the English versions and Arabic versions of the texts under
study with regard to specific questions that I posed arising from my
reading of the English versions. Sometimes during our meeting the two
informants expressed differing opinions and perspectives, and although
my goal was that they should simply elucidate the meaning of the Ara-
bic texts, they also gave their personal opinions on the issues, including
criticism of the report. Where these comments enrich understanding of
the case, I have included them in the analysis.
In examining the documents a first very general question to ask is
to what extent we are dealing with an ‘intercultural conflict’ in this
communicative encounter. Referring back to Ting-Toomey and Oetzel’s
(2013a, 635) definition given earlier, there does seem to be an ‘emo-
tional struggle’ over ‘incompatibility of cultural ideologies and values’,
yet this is complicated by the fact that one party (Saudi Arabian repre-
sentation) is actually aiming to show that its values are at least partially
compatible with the values of the other party (CEDAW). In contrast,
the conflictual element is heightened by the CEDAW committee, which
shows suspicion that the situation on the ground in Saudi Arabia does
not sufficiently correspond with the Convention. Nevertheless, discur-
sive norms of politeness in such international communications mask
antagonistic elements and tolerance is displayed on both sides, since
neither side wants the relationship to break down; there is a delicate
power balance. With regard to conflict styles, we find both parties often
co-operating through seeking to reach understanding, at times com-
peting in defending different positions, and with regard to the Saudi
representation sometimes avoiding through not providing full informa-
tion. I shall now explore in micro-level detail what to my mind are
some troublesome aspects of the textual communications in terms of
communicative effectiveness.

Micro-Level Analysis

In English Translation
In reading the English translations of the Arabic texts (CEDAW
2007a, b), one notices the frequent discursive presence of Islamic tra-
dition. Here is an early passage in the reports showing this. The passage
refers to Saudi Arabian law:
 Traditions 137

The country’s laws cannot transgress the framework of the Islamic

Shariah and, consequently, may not be changed or developed by the
legislative authority in the Kingdom in a manner which would lead
to the creation of new principles, inconsistent with the bases of the
Islamic Shariah, in letter and spirit. (CEDAW 2007a, 10)

Whereas that is a general statement, the religious references are fre-

quently used in more specific contexts, and no explanation is provided
as to their implications. Here is an example concerning education and
employment:

Curricula are the same and provide the same opportunities to women
and men for education, employment, training etc., consistent with
the Islamic Shariah. (CEDAW 2007a, 29, my highlighting)

Informant A explained that mention of conformity with the Islamic

Shariah here is likely to refer to special provisions/restrictions regard-
ing employment for women. She remarked that the phrase
(thawābt shr–iyya), ‘consistent with the Islamic Shariah’, is a frequent
phrase in many Saudi texts such as newspapers and in oral discourse;
the phrase is used without further explanation and without precise
references from the Qur’an. According to Informant A, referring to
conformity with Shariah law has a strong power in the Saudi con-
text, and definitely ‘helps to end any argument, especially if related to
Saudi women’. It seems that this particular central expression of tradi-
tion constitutes a Saudi discursive habit, and that its use is habitually
‘high context’ (low linguistic explicitness), which is carried over into
the English translation. Both informants agreed that ‘Islamic Shariah’
is often cited as stipulating practices that stem in reality from (tribal)
custom and cultural beliefs. Informant B contributed a further polem-
ical point of view. She asserted that attributing restrictions to Islamic
Shariah is wrong, since the text of the Qur’an places few restrictions on
women, or the restrictions are a part of life in the seventh century and
are not applicable in today’s world. Thus, Informant B situates herself as
belonging to a group of Saudi women who promote deeper knowledge
of the text of the Qur’an, and different readings of it as compared with
the traditional Saudi religious scholars, in order to advance women’s
rights (cf. Al-Rasheed 2013, 257).
For the English-language reader the frequent repetition of refer-
ences to Shariah with no explanations of what Shariah law actually
entails in specific cases makes the texts difficult to fathom, and gives
138 Mapping Memory in Translation

the impression that the law and its interpretation are unique and
immutable. Informant B said that this is indeed the perception of many
Muslim people too, who (wrongly, in her opinion) consider that laws
and customs applicable 1400 years ago can and should still be applied
today. The function of religious references in the report seems twofold.
First, they assert the identity of Saudi Arabia as a state based on reli-
gious nationalism (Al-Rasheed 2013, 16). Secondly, they act as a sign of
prudence in the same way as the general reservation to the Convention
cited earlier: actions in favour of women’s rights and freedoms will be
approved and undertaken, as long as they do not contravene certain
Saudi beliefs and customs. Informant A put this another way: she con-
siders that the phrase ‘consistent with the Islamic Shariah’ acts as an
‘excuse’ for not following CEDAW in all details.
The major concept on which the CEDAW text hinges is that of ‘equal-
ity’, more specifically equality between men and women, the notion
that they have the same rights. ‘Equality’ is certainly what Garre char-
acterizes as a ‘contested term’ (1999, 155); that is, a term for which
it is difficult to establish consensus on its semantic definition and
extension. When two languages/traditions are brought into contact
through translation, the situation may be exacerbated due to the cre-
ation of ‘interlingual uncertainty’ of meaning because of overlapping
or non-corresponding meanings in the two languages/cultures (Cao
2007, 75). There seems to be a case of non-corresponding meaning with
respect to notions of ‘equality’ in English/Western feminist tradition
and Arabic/Saudi tradition. According to the Saudi Arabian report, Islam
presents a notion of equality between men and women as humans who
have reciprocal rights and complementary roles:

[Islamic Shariah] charges the man with earning a living to provide

for himself and his wife as compensation for the woman’s role as
conceiver, child bearer and mother. (CEDAW 2007a, 11)4

This is of course contrary to the CEDAW concept of equality, which

warns against ‘stereotyped gender roles’, since they generally lead to
restrictions on women (OHCHR 1979). The Saudi perspective, however,
is based on the fact of physiological differences in men and women that
make them different and complementary; equality as human beings is a
matter of giving equal respect to different roles.
There are also other notions of equality at play in the Saudi Arabian
report, demonstrating how ‘equality’ is a complex concept and ‘con-
tested term’. In answers to the list of questions (CEDAW 2007b), a
 Traditions 139

verse from the Qur’an is quoted that is said to establish the principle
of equality. Here is the English version:

‘O mankind, we created you from a single pair of a male and a female

and made you into nations and tribes that you might know each
other. Verily, the most honoured of you in the sight of Allah is he
who is the most righteous among you . . . ’5 (CEDAW 2007b, 4)

Without being able to isolate an explicit additional phrase in the Arabic

original, both Saudi informants said that the Arabic verse was clearer
than its translation in expressing the idea that no matter who you are
you can be righteous in the eyes of Allah, and therefore other distin-
guishing differences among people such as race and gender are not
important. In the English this notion of equality of all before God is
not entirely clear, which is a pity, since this non-discriminatory sense
of ‘equality’ comes closest to the CEDAW sense. Furthermore, the use of
‘mankind’ and ‘he’ in the translation meaning people/person (whereas
the Arabic text is gender neutral) is not felicitous in a target femi-
nist context, even contradicting the notion of equality intended to be
expressed. Another reference to equality enumerates different types:

God created mankind from Adam and Eve and between Adam and his
wife, Eve, there was equality in respect of rights and duties, human-
ity and obligation but not in respect of characteristics and func-
tions, where equality would not be in a woman’s interest. (CEDAW
2007a, 14)

It is difficult to know the intended meaning of the phrase ‘equality

in respect of rights and duties, humanity and obligation’. The CEDAW
committee reader will probably read it with the Western sense of equal-
ity. The phrase ‘equality would not be in a woman’s interest’ is also not
explained further. My Saudi informants interpreted this as referring to a
woman’s physiology and child-bearing role: it would not be in her inter-
est, for example, to do heavy physical labour or to serve in the army in
combat forces.
In addition to the different concepts of equality in the Saudi report,
there seems to be inconsistency with mention of both ‘same rights’ and
‘reciprocal rights’ in the report:

[The Holy Koran and Immaculate Sunna] contain unequivocal rul-

ings in favour of non-discrimination between men and women,
140 Mapping Memory in Translation

desiring that women enjoy the same rights and duties. (CEDAW
2007a, 7, my highlighting)

[Islam] views both woman and man in a social framework gov-

erned by relations of reciprocal rights. (CEDAW 2007a, 11, my
highlighting)

Such inconsistency is confusing for the English reader, and is of impor-

tance since ‘equality’ is the key CEDAW idea. In the summary record
of the oral discussion between the CEDAW committee and the Saudi
Arabian delegation to Geneva, the record notes the following thoughts
of one committee member, Ms Dairiam:

It was confusing that the [Saudi Arabian periodic] report referred in

different places to ‘reciprocal rights’, ‘complementarity’ of roles and
the ‘same rights’ for women and men. On an urgent basis, she [Ms
Dairiam] recommended dialogue and consultation on the concept
and meaning of equality in order to provide a basis for all laws and
policies and for service delivery. (CEDAW 2008b, 5)

Throughout the documents of the Saudi Arabian representation there

seems to be a tension between tradition and modernization. There is
certainly expression of a will, enumeration of laws, and description
of projects and concrete achievements in widening opportunities for
women in education and work. However, such expressions are often
accompanied by qualifications, expressing conformity with Shariah law,
as we have seen, and in addition conformity with ‘woman’s special
nature’. Here is an example of this:

The establishment of new applied specializations at the university

level for women, suited to their nature and capabilities and to
the jobs available to them according to the precepts of the Islamic
Shariah. (CEDAW 2007b, 15, my highlighting)

I asked my informants what the highlighted phrase meant in prac-

tice. Informant B explained that at that time certain jobs and therefore
training for those jobs were not considered appropriate for women,
for example being an engineer or a lawyer, but since then opportuni-
ties have increased somewhat. The Shadow Report (Saudi Women for
Reform 2007, 7) explains that ‘women are considered to have a “spe-
cial nature” that corresponds with their natural duties as mothers and
 Traditions 141

wives in an Islamic framework. Therefore, the type of work women are

prepared for is mainly service jobs such as teaching, medicine and nurs-
ing’. The Report notes that in 2006–07, despite some changes, there
were still a number of university departments to which women were
not admitted (Saudi Women for Reform 2007, 32–35).
Even though there has been an opening out of possibilities to women,
the traditional desire to protect women through restrictions is still
apparent. Reference to legal restrictions on women’s work is made in
the following passage:

As for the provision of special protection for women during preg-

nancy, article 160 of the Labour and Workers Law prohibits the
employment of women in hazardous and harmful occupations.
(CEDAW 2007a, 38, my highlighting)

This statement refers to CEDAW article 3, which stipulates the pro-

vision of ‘special protection to women during pregnancy in types of
work proved to be harmful to them’ (OHCHR 1979). For the Saudi
Arabian authors this is not applicable in their country, since by law
women are prohibited from doing harmful work. No details are given
about what ‘hazardous and harmful occupations’ are in the Saudi con-
text. Informant B commented that in certain Saudi interpretations most
employment was (and still is by some) considered ‘hazardous and harm-
ful’ for women, particularly if it involves travel and the possibility of
gender mixing. Informant B considered that the plea of ‘hazardous and
harmful occupations’ was a pretext to restrict occupations for women.
Certainly the English-language reader of the report would need to be
provided with additional information in order to understand the partic-
ular meaning of ‘dangerous occupations’ for women in this context.
On one occasion a statement reads like a contradiction with an earlier
statement in the report in English; understanding a translation issue
offers some clarification. Here is the passage in question:

There has been a change in the traditional view of woman in

society and obstacles preventing women’s participation in social
and economic activity have been removed. (CEDAW 2007a, 16, my
highlighting)

The authors seem to be presenting a contradictory situation, since ear-

lier it was stated that in Islamic Shariah the primary role of the woman
142 Mapping Memory in Translation

is to care for the home and bear children (CEDAW 2007a, 11). Islamic
Shariah being the all-important foundation of the state, surely (from the
point of view of the authors) this Islamic tradition regarding women
cannot change. My informants pointed out that in the Arabic original
of the report, the term , ‘tqlydiyya’ (rendered as ‘traditional’ in the
quote) refers specifically to social custom rather than religious tradition.
So religious preferences may remain unchanged, at the same time that
social customs and outlooks are changing. In actual fact, many sectors of
society remain conservative in their thinking and reluctant to adopt new
practices. The informants say that customary conservatism explains why
women voting is ‘not completely possible’. Again, such contextual elu-
cidation is necessary to understand the phrase in the following passage
from the Saudi report:

The law does not prohibit women from participating in elections,

although, in practice, that participation is not completely possible.
(CEDAW 2007b, 15, my highlighting)

Overall, the documents of the Saudi Arabian representation show clear

evidence of a textual construction that aims to correspond with CEDAW
expectations; in other words, the authors wish to depict the situation in
Saudi Arabia in a good light with respect to the Convention. My infor-
mants said that there is in fact a noticeable gap between the contents of
the Saudi report and the actual lives of women on the ground in Saudi
Arabia, who, despite ongoing changes, continue to experience severe
restrictions on their freedom and rights. An important reason for the dis-
crepancy between the report and women’s experience is that the report
focuses on state laws, whereas often practices are customary (de facto)
rather than enshrined in law (de jure). The most flagrant textual exam-
ple of the mismatch between the report and reality is the total omission
of mention of the male guardianship system in the report. Fortunately,
the CEDAW review process involves supplementary documents such as
the Shadow Report (Saudi Women for Reform 2007), which serve to pro-
vide the committee with a broader understanding of the situation in the
country.

Translating into Arabic

In the communicative dialogue between the CEDAW committee and the
Saudi representation, the amount of text that is translated into Arabic
is less voluminous than that into English. One interesting communica-
tion difficulty occurs with the expression ‘temporary special measures’.
 Traditions 143

Judging from the Saudi response to the CEDAW article in which this
term appears, the concept has possibly not been understood. ‘Temporary
special measures’ can be aligned with the ‘Western’ concept of affirma-
tive action with regard to disadvantaged groups, and is not a familiar
notion in the Saudi context. Here is the beginning of the CEDAW article
in question, and the Saudi response in their report:

Article 4 (1): Adoption by States Parties of temporary special mea-

sures aimed at accelerating de facto equality between men and
women shall not be considered discrimination as defined by the
present Convention . . . (my highlighting)
Saudi Response: As for the paragraph 1 of this article, all citizens are
equal before the law, without discrimination, as previously stated.
(CEDAW 2007a, 20)

In preparing their report the Saudi representation would have used

the Arabic translation of the CEDAW convention. My informants said
that the Arabic translation of ‘temporary special measures’ in that text,
»
(tdābyr khās.a mu aqta), is a literal translation, and they con-
firmed that this did not allow them to understand the meaning of the
expression.
An important document translated into Arabic contains the com-
ments and recommendations of the CEDAW committee (CEDAW
2008a), which represent the end point of the periodic review process.
The comments and recommendations are intended by the CEDAW
committee to be widely disseminated among Saudi government offi-
cials, Consultative Council members, politicians and women’s and
human rights organizations in Saudi Arabia. The recommendations are
expressed in direct strong language. They are a reflection of CEDAW
commitments in the Western feminist tradition, and there is no con-
sideration of Saudi sensibilities regarding their traditions. Here are some
examples of this rhetoric (with a few explanatory comments from me in
square brackets):

The Committee urges the State party to consider the withdrawal of

its general reservation to the Convention (CEDAW 2008a, 2) [the
reservation concerns the proviso of conformity with Islamic Shariah]
The Committee calls upon the State party to enact a comprehensive
gender equality law (CEDAW 2008a, 3) [that is, a law corresponding
to the CEDAW concept of gender equality]
144 Mapping Memory in Translation

The Committee urges the State party to take immediate steps to end
the practice of male guardianship over women (CEDAW 2008a, 3)

The Committee calls upon the State party to remove impediments

to women’s employment, including by abolishing de facto workplace
segregation of women and men (CEDAW 2008a, 7) [segregation of
the sexes is firmly entrenched in Saudi custom]

The Committee calls upon the State party to end the practice of
polygamy (CEDAW 2008a, 36)

I was interested in discovering from my informants whether the toughly

expressed, no-nonsense conclusions from the CEDAW committee had
been conveyed in the Arabic translation, or whether the sentiments had
been softened in order to increase the likely acceptability of the ideas
in the Saudi cultural context. My informants said that the direct and
strong language was maintained in Arabic.

Multilevel approach

This textual analysis contains strands of complexity that are difficult to

unravel unless a multilevel conflict analysis is conducted. Taking their
cue from the social ecological model, Ting-Toomey and Oetzel (2013b)
propose the study of conflict and tensions at four levels: macro-level:
large sociocultural contexts, histories, worldviews, values, ideologies;
exo-level: large formal institutions, e.g. government agencies, court sys-
tem, police system, religious system, school system; meso-level: immedi-
ate units, e.g. local neighbourhood, local church group, workplace; and
micro-level: intrapersonal and interpersonal level, e.g. the actual face-to-
face or mediated conflict communication encounter. What is interesting
to consider with regard to the different levels is the potential interac-
tive influence of levels that bears on an intercultural contact episode
(Ting-Toomey & Oetzel 2013b, 771, 784).
In our case a multilevel analysis allows us to avoid a stereotypical
vision of ‘Saudi Arabia versus the West’, as it brings to light internal
conflicts. Here is a multilevel analysis of relevant conflictual relations
and tensions in summary form:

Macro-level: Feminist tradition of gender equality versus other tradi-

tions of differentiated gender roles.
 Traditions 145

Exo-level: (1) Within Saudi Arabia competitive relations between the

modernizing state and conservative religious leadership (Al-Rasheed
2013, 20).
(2) Relations between Saudi Arabian government and UN human
rights organs: Saudi cooperation but with reservations (Alhargan
2012b).
Meso-level: (1) Divide between official Saudi Arabian CEDAW repre-
sentation and progressive Saudi women’s groups, e.g. Saudi Women
for Reform.
(2) Cooperation but also tensions between Saudi Arabian CEDAW
representation and CEDAW committee.
Micro-level: Textual communications (2007–08) of the Saudi Arabian
CEDAW periodic review reveal internal Saudi conflict between mod-
ernizing (CEDAW-friendly) and conservative forces, as well as ten-
sions between the Saudi representation and CEDAW committee,
where Saudis claim cultural specificity.

The micro-level communications clearly embody conflicts and tensions

from the other levels, which involve divergent traditions, conflicted
traditions and evolving traditions. Thinking of the case in terms of
different levels reveals a mismatch between meso-level objectives. The
CEDAW committee’s objective is for all countries to sign up and imple-
ment the convention fully. The Saudi Arabian representation’s objective
is to adhere gradually to the convention provisions, but to protect
the country’s perceived cultural identity at the same time. In the
communicative encounter this meso-level mismatch is paralleled in a
mismatch of aims for the specific encounter: the CEDAW committee
wants to know exactly what is going on in Saudi Arabia at the moment
with regard to implementation of the convention; the Saudi Arabian
representation wants to show its country in a good light with regard to
current progress in implementing CEDAW articles, therefore is not fully
transparent in providing information. The communications also reveal
questions of fear and threat (cf. Ting-Toomey 2012): the Saudis want to
cling to their ‘group membership identity’, their traditional specificity.
At the same time the Saudis have entered into the periodic review pro-
cess because the state party desires to maintain its status regarding the
Convention, since being a party to international conventions shores
up the Saudi government’s modernizing goal of participation in con-
temporary international politics and norms (exo-level). For its part, the
146 Mapping Memory in Translation

CEDAW committee fears that the Convention and its monitoring may
be undermined by the state party’s lack of full adherence to information
provision standards. Due to the complex range of conflicts and tensions,
the nature of communication is affected, and at times the situation is
not facilitated by the mediation of interlingual translation.

Discussion: Communication across Traditions

When there are comprehension issues at the textual content level

with regard to references to divergent traditions, ideally communica-
tion needs to be mindful (Ting-Toomey 2009, 2012) by taking into
account the level of knowledge of the interlocutor with regard to cul-
tural concepts. How can the CEDAW committee, whose membership
is primarily non-Arabic, understand the concrete implications of the
phrases ‘in accordance with Shariah law’, ‘suitable to woman’s nature’
or ‘hazardous and harmful occupations’ in the specific Saudi context if
no explanations are given? How can Saudi Arabians understand ‘tem-
porary special measures’ from a literal translation in Arabic with no
further clarification? In our case it is known in advance that the texts
will be translated into the other language as part of the communicative
dialogue between the CEDAW committee and the Saudi Arabian repre-
sentation. Therefore, the source texts could have been written with more
explanation in view of the prospective translation readership. Clarifi-
cation can also be provided through translation choices: as discussed
earlier, an important strategy is ‘thick translation’ (Kwame 1993), expli-
cation and annotations in the translation, which compensate for the
knowledge gap. Cultural translation or the provision of interpretation
frames (Katan 2004, 171) via explanation is not undertaken in the texts
under study, but would certainly have increased the mutual knowledge
of the parties, an important component of effective communication
(Ting-Toomey 2009). The translations do not seem to have contributed
noticeably to propagating shared transcultural memory with regard to
divergent traditions.
However, a different point of view on the issue is relevant. As we
have seen, the term ‘equality’ (musawah) is used in different ways in
the Arabic text (and its English translation). It is generally a prereq-
uisite that as far as possible there must be clarity in the source text
before there can be clarity in the translation and effective communi-
cation. But perhaps the polysemous unclarity surrounding ‘equality’
(musawah) and also the floating between ‘same rights’ and ‘reciprocal
rights’ is desired, somewhat in the manner of diplomatic instruments
(Cao 2007, 72). The purpose of the authors would be to signal that the
 Traditions 147

Saudi context equates to a large extent with the CEDAW expectations,

since polysemy allows ‘equality’ (musawah) to be understood as some-
thing close to a Western feminist sense, and the floating qualifier of
‘rights’ creates possible adhesion to the CEDAW point of view; at the
same time a more conservative Saudi view is not denied. This lin-
guistic slipperiness could eventually become a means by which the
linguistic item is resignified to allow evolution in identity and tradition
(Mendoza et al. 2002). If the ambiguity and vagueness are deliberate,
then no doubt it is not the role of the translator to explicate. Simi-
larly, with ‘suitable to woman’s nature’, ‘in accordance with Shariah
law’ and ‘hazardous and harmful occupations’, explaining what these
expressions imply may do a disservice to the aim of the Saudi govern-
ment to present a modernizing, CEDAW-friendly view of the country.
Thus, it could be argued that a thick translation would be disloyal
to the source text’s intended communicative function in the textual
dialogue. In such instances, rather than in the translation itself, expla-
nation should then be provided by other means. In the textual dialogue
it is indeed the CEDAW committee’s task to seek clarifications through
questioning the state party. The CEDAW committee also obtained sup-
plementary information from other sources, notably the Shadow Report.
The translator as mediator has the delicate task of deciding in specific
instances whether or not explication is appropriate. As Tymoczko (2007,
232) says, the translator must take responsibility for decisions regarding
choice of translation strategies in the particular texts and contexts at
hand.
Another important consideration to take into account is the norms of
UN translation. One aspect of institutional memory that has an impact
on translators in an international organization is strongly standard-
ized translation practices. It seems that the established UN translational
norm is not to provide explanations. Nevertheless, norms, like tra-
ditions, can evolve and produce variants where useful. There is one
specific translation strategy that is helpful to indicate cultural specificity
and contributes to minimizing misunderstandings (Pym 2012, 149).
In many texts about Arabic cultures, including Saudi Arabia (for example
Wynbrandt 2010; Al-Rasheed 2013), words are retained in transliterated
Arabic to indicate that the term has a particular meaning in the specific
Arabic cultural sphere, and if the term is not well known, an explana-
tion or entry in a glossary is provided. In the CEDAW translations into
English there is no evidence of Arabic terms apart from ‘Shariah’ and
some use of the Arabic calendar (e.g. 6 Ramadan 1389 A.H.). More use
of transliterated Arabic terms could have been useful. For instance, the
transliterated Arabic term ‘tqlydiyya’ could have been included with a
148 Mapping Memory in Translation

brief gloss to clarify that it is customary tradition and not religious tra-
dition that is being referred to in the text section in question. With
regard to the Arabic translations, ‘temporary special measures’ could
have been retained in English to signal the specific belonging of the
concept to a Western tradition, and accompanied by a brief explana-
tion. Introducing new terms/concepts into the target culture increases
knowledge that is beneficial for effective communication (Ting-Toomey
2009).
With regard to the blunt communication of the CEDAW committee’s
final recommendations and correspondingly blunt Arabic translation,
one wonders whether this text is communicatively effective. In this par-
ticular context where Saudi Arabia has signed up to the Convention
and the CEDAW committee has a surveillance role, it does not seem
feasible to expect ethnorelativism on the part of the committee, but
there could be a less domineering attitude concerning cultural iden-
tity based on Islam and centuries-old Saudi cultural practices. Although
Informant B says that the Saudi report tends to use references to Islamic
Shariah supporting restrictions that are not part of the Qur’an, both
informants agree that Islam is a vital part of Saudi identity and should
be respected by international bodies. Both informants express the view
that changes in Saudi Arabia can only be fairly gradual, because tra-
ditions have a strong hold on people. Thus, calling for radical actions
and change, such as embedding a Western-style statement on equality
into the Basic Law of Saudi Arabia and abolishing traditional Saudi cul-
tural practices, is unlikely to be effective, and may indeed be offensive
to some. There is, for example, opposition to CEDAW in the country
from some female Islamic activists, notably Nura al-Saad, who objects
to ‘an imposition of a foreign system on Islamic societies’ (Al-Rasheed
2013, 275). For MacIntyre (2009), speakers of ‘languages of modernity’
have tended to suffer from hubris in considering that everything,
including elements of vastly different traditions, could be translated,
explained and understood in their languages. MacIntyre considers that
it is only when we learn the other language and immerse ourselves in
its cultural sphere that we can perceive limitations and shortcomings
in our own beliefs; therefore, ‘rival traditions’ should be approached
with humility. A more respectful and empathic approach in CEDAW
committee rhetoric (both source texts and corresponding translations),
which reduces identity threat (Ting-Toomey 2012) and expresses realis-
tic expectations given the memorial strength of Saudi traditions, might
ensure a more enthusiastic desire among Saudis to disseminate the
CEDAW recommendations.
 Traditions 149

My difficulties in understanding the English texts and my perception

of anomalies (mirroring the experience of CEDAW committee mem-
bers, as shown in some of their comments; CEDAW 2008b) were indeed
the result of the encounter with an unfamiliar tradition combined
with some translation issues. Similarly, there is evidence of misun-
derstanding on the Arabic side with respect to a Western concept.
An additional reason for problems in processing the English transla-
tions seems to be (deliberate) unclarity in the Saudi original, reflecting
a kind of balancing act, as the Saudis are caught between a desire
both to maintain conservative tradition and to modernize (to please
the CEDAW interlocutor). This has caused communicative problems,
but the unclarity is understandable from the Saudi point of view. The
internal Saudi conflict shows how tradition is not uniform, and not
fixed but dynamic (Shils 1981). For its part, the CEDAW committee
appears to display some lack of cultural sensitivity, but this is under-
standable in view of its fervour and objectives. Thus, the study shows
that there is no easy answer to questions of communicative effectiveness
in this encounter. Indeed, concepts of the translator being a ‘cultural
mediator’ (Katan 2004; Pym 2012), ‘communicative effectiveness and
competence’ (Ting-Toomey 2012) and ‘logical rejection of an incompat-
ible belief’ (MacIntyre 2009) cannot fully account for the complexity
of an actual discursive encounter between divergent traditions in the
process of ‘cultural negotiation’ (Shaheed 2010). It needs to be accepted
that there will be an ongoing process of communication between the
parties: moments of communicative confusion resulting in questions
and explanations, partial clarifications, expressions of disagreement and
agreement, times when cultural differences will become salient and
when they are not, moments when the mediation of interlingual trans-
lation and interpreting helps and others when it hinders, and a greater
understanding between the parties gradually emerging over time in the
process of evolving tradition and identity. This process of contact and
change combines translation both in the sense of dynamic displace-
ment and in the sense of transformative engagement with the other.
Eventually CEDAW may become a firm part of the memory canon of its
signatory state parties.

In this chapter I have explored the topic of tradition and translation.

Tradition is part of (trans)cultural memory, since tradition in a par-
ticular social group is a matter of beliefs and practices with symbolic
significance passed down from the past. Tradition and translation can be
brought together in various ways. The approach taken here was to study
150 Mapping Memory in Translation

the expression of tradition in texts, and the challenges that differing

and conflictual traditions embodied in discourse might pose for transla-
tion and communication more generally. Textual and contextual study
revealed various complexities of the communicative encounter. Navi-
gating this complex situation through translation was constrained by
the institutional setting in which the translation work was undertaken,
a type of setting that will be discussed in detail in the next chapter.
7
Institutional Memory

‘Institutional’ and ‘institution’ refer here to highly structured formal

groups (in contrast to the less formal groups that were considered
in Chapter 3); that is, corporations, and governmental and non-
governmental organizations. Institutions exist at various different levels,
including increasingly the transnational, with the significant rise since
the mid-twentieth century of international governmental organizations
and NGOs. In the Chapter 2 case study, the publishing house was dis-
cussed as an important institution in literary translation. In Chapter 6
the question of UN translation norms was mentioned briefly, and in
the present chapter I investigate in detail the workings of the transla-
tion service of a transnational institution, the European Commission.
Institutions are formalized by having founding charters, status as a legal
entity, physical headquarters and a structured workforce. Other signs
of institutionalization are symbols, mottos, logos, flags, official colours,
letterheads, uniforms and anthems. In connection with this chapter’s
case study, a well-known institutional sign of the European Union is the
European flag, with its blue background and circle of 12 stars.
Institutional memory refers to the notion that institutions have
founding aims, ideology, an official history and practices, which are
remembered and passed on within the institution. Founders and other
important people in the history of an institution are commemorated
in various ways, such as naming a building or a fund after the per-
son. Memory of ideology and practices strongly shapes the behaviour
of members of the institution. Mary Douglas (1986) even considers that
stable social formations develop a uniform and disciplined ‘thought
style’ that sets the preconditions of cognition of the group’s members.
The study of ‘organizational memory’ (which is largely synonymous
with my ‘institutional memory’) has developed as a specialization

151
152 Mapping Memory in Translation

among scholars in organization studies.1 The first synthetic article about

organizational memory that set the framework generally adopted by
organization studies scholars was Walsh and Ungson (1991). These
researchers define organizational memory as stored information from
an organization’s history. This information is kept in ‘five storage bins
or retention facilities’ consisting of individuals, culture, transforma-
tions, structures and ecology (Walsh & Ungson 1991, 63). The memorial
information is retrieved where relevant and brought to bear on present
decisions. Walsh and Ungson’s conceptions have been criticized on
several counts: their repository model is static and presupposes the pos-
sibility of storing an ‘objective truth’; memory is conceived as having
only one function, that of aiding decision making; and from a method-
ological point of view the focus is on individualism alone (Rowlinson
et al. 2010). There is in fact no clear ‘objective truth’ with regard to
memory, since as amply discussed and shown earlier in this work,
memory is a dynamic, individually and socially constructed process.
It can be shown, for example, that the presentation of official institu-
tional memory is selective and tends to glorify the organization, while
remaining silent on less glorious episodes or details of the past. For
example, the Cadbury World museum in Birmingham fails to men-
tion the issue of past slavery on plantations supplying Cadbury’s cocoa
(Rowlinson et al. 2010, 81). With regard to function, it is certainly
correct that memory, whether individual or collective, has a direc-
tive function (for individual memory, see Bluck 2003), but it also has
other functions. In an organization, memory has the role of creat-
ing a corporate image, shoring up group identity, and it can also be
used for boosting morale among the workers. Particularly important
for these functions is the emphasis on the founders of the organi-
zation, founding dates, founding charters and the aims and values
contained within them. With regard to methodological individualism,
this leads to the study of ‘collected’ memory – that is, interview-
ing and aggregating the views of a group of individuals – and the
neglect of ‘collective’ memory (Olick 1999), which would entail study-
ing cultural products and practices such as corporate museums, annual
reports, archives, company webpages, commissioned histories, company
commemorations and naming practices. These instances of collective
memory play a role in reinforcing the shared identity and aspirations
of members of the organization. Rowlinson et al. (2010) call for a
more well-rounded approach to memory in organization studies. In the
case study for this chapter both collective and collected approaches are
adopted.
 Institutional Memory 153

In the case study I discuss not only institutional memory, but also
personal memory, electronic memory, textual memory, group memory,
national memory and transnational memory. The question needs to be
posed, then, as to how the various types of memory may be inter-related
together with medial and practical forms. The division into different
types of memory is itself a convenient scholarly construct, but con-
sidering inter-relations may at least provide a less simplistic outlook.
Some of the most interesting work in this area comes from psychologists
who have engaged with the notion of ‘extended cognition’ in examin-
ing the relationships between individual brain and environment. A first
step is to propose that memory is distributed across the individual
brain, non-organic memory (electronic memory) and artefacts like pho-
tos and books (Sutton et al. 2010). Then other individuals and groups
are brought into the picture. Whereas Halbwachs (1952 [1925]) argued
for social influences on individual memory, van Dijk (2010) extends
this to emphasize the role of medial products: memory is embodied
in the individual brain, enabled by medial technologies and products,
and embedded in sociocultural dynamics. Memory can be conceived
as distributed across people and socially in different ways. ‘Transactive
memory’ concerns a small group of intimate people who have had
shared experiences and who construct memory together discursively;
autobiographical memory too is shaped by how we discuss it with oth-
ers (Sutton et al. 2010). More expansive notions point to the distribution
of memory across large groups of people in society synchronically and
diachronically by means of communicative interactions, social prac-
tices and shared medial products (Wertsch 2002). In Chapter 2 I already
adopted the distributed memory approach by discussing how the trans-
lation product was the result not only of the individual translator, but
also of other contributing individuals, non-organic agents and social
entities such as the publishing house. Chapter 3 then focused more
deeply on the human–machine relationship. In this chapter I take the
distributed approach further by considering all the different types of
memory covered so far as well as institutional memory.
Subject to some disagreement are the exact mechanisms of dis-
tributed memory. It does not seem wise to say that the various types
of memory and medial/practical forms have exactly analogous func-
tioning mechanisms. This was argued in Chapter 2 when a distinction
was made between neural traces of memory, recall and representa-
tion in writing. The neural, bodily, technological, medial and social
resources of memory seem to have disparate but complementary prop-
erties (Sutton et al. 2010). There is, however, one common mechanism
154 Mapping Memory in Translation

that I propose is shared by my delineated types of memory: the mech-

anism of multidirectional memory, linking memories from heteroge-
neous sources. This is in particular a factor in transnational memory
and is magnified in cosmopolitan connective memory (see Chapter 8).
Different types of memory may be conceived as being mutually influen-
tial, for example neural memory/cognition has both created and been
affected by electronic memory devices and platforms; and individual
and social memory have a reciprocal, mutually influencing relationship,
as do national and transnational memory. With respect to the individ-
ual/social, a further relationship was referred to earlier: the part–whole
relationship whereby a collective cultural memory is related to but not
the same as the memory of aggregated individuals of the group. Finally,
one type of memory may contribute to another: transnational institu-
tional memory contributes to transnational memory and in some cases
to global memory.

The Directorate General for Translation of the European

Commission

The case study in this chapter concerns a transnational institution,

the European Commission, which is the main executive organ of the
European Union. More specifically, the study focuses on the Directorate
General for Translation (DGT) of the European Commission. The DGT
of the European Commission is the largest in-house translation service
in the world, with approximately 1700 translators2 covering 24 differ-
ent languages. Translation is a necessary activity in the EU context due
to the language policy, which stipulates adopting an official language
nominated by each member state. Legislative texts and many others
are translated into all official languages, creating a huge amount of
translation activity. In addition to work done by the in-house transla-
tors, approximately 24 per cent of DGT translation work is outsourced
to freelancers. The translators work on texts originating from other
Directorates and Services of the European Commission, as well as trans-
lating incoming texts from member states. The translation service has
existed since the early days of the European institutions in the 1950s,
and with the increase in the number of member states (28 today) has
expanded considerably (European Commission: DGT). The DGT seemed
to me to be particularly interesting to study from the point of view of
memory, because a number of translators have worked there for their
whole career so could provide valuable testimonies. Other reasons that
this institution was chosen for study were the major role of translation
 Institutional Memory 155

in the institution, and the goals of the EU with regard to human rights,
notably the maintenance of peace and promotion of well-being within
the Union.

DGT Collective Memory

Let us first look at evidence of collective memory concerning the DGT.

The DGT has itself shown interest in its history and legacy. Based on
a more detailed initial study in French undertaken by members of the
DGT, a book of 79 pages with diagrams and coloured illustrations enti-
tled Translation at the European Commission: A History was published in
2010. Both the French study and English book are available on the
DGT’s website. The book is intended to be a reader-friendly presentation
of the DGT’s history to both EU staff and the general public. The reason
for the DGT’s interest in its history at this time is that 2008 marked
the anniversary milestone of 50 years’ official existence of the transla-
tion service. So while serving as an information source, the book has a
celebratory function: it ‘pays tribute to the work performed by DGT’s
staff since the 1950s’ (European Commission 2010, 79). In his preface,
the then Director-General for Translation, Karl-Johan Lönnroth, also
indicates the memorial role of the book for the wider institution: ‘this
history of the translation service is a crucial component of the European
Union’s institutional memory’ (EC 2010, 6).
In the introductory matter (EC 2010, 3) it is stated that the book
draws on the Commission’s historical archives and on material gained
from numerous interviews with former and current employees. How-
ever, there is no expression of personal views or experiences in the book;
no voices of individual staff are heard, apart from Lönnroth’s. The book
content is very much a factual narrative in a single voice, which gives
the impression that what is presented is the official history; there is no
room for different perspectives or debate. The history is depicted as a
harmonious progression, although one conflict is mentioned (the strike
action of the translation service in 1989 over its building location) and
the difficult time of 2004 due to hugely increased translation demand
is discussed. At that time the number of official languages jumped from
11 to 20 as a result of the new member state accessions. Accessions are
indeed evoked as major events in the DGT’s history, since they entail
the addition of official languages in accordance with the multilingual-
ism policy. This shows the impact of developments in the EU structure
on translation activity, a relation that is highlighted in the book. Other
important events discussed are organizational changes, such as the
156 Mapping Memory in Translation

change in status of the translation service from an appendage of the

DG Personnel and Administration to a fully fledged Directorate Gen-
eral since 2002. Significant changes in working practices and conditions
over the years such as equipment and resources available are noted.
Overall this history is very positive, highlights achievements, stresses
the importance of the translation service (with the desire, no doubt, to
make the role of this service better known and more valued) and may
serve to boost the morale of the translators (cf. Rowlinson et al. 2010
mentioned earlier). The importance of translators in the EU is expressed
several times, as in the following passage:

The history of translation at the European Commission is first and

foremost the story of the women and men whose work has helped
to create the European Union. Union between the peoples of Europe
would have been unthinkable without translation to build bridges.
(EC 2010, 6)

In a similar vein, Lönnroth makes reference to the translators’ role with

respect to the aspirations of the founders of the European Union: ‘In the
epic journey of the translators who, day after day, have given tangible
expression to the dream of the founding fathers it is the full richness of
the European tapestry that is revealed’ (EC 2010, 7).
Memory is also marshalled in a futuristic way, since remembering the
successful development of the service and overcoming of past difficulties
leads to optimism about the future:

The Commission has managed to constantly adapt to the require-

ments stemming from its language [policy] whilst ensuring that
the Community machine continues to run smoothly, and it will
undoubtedly respond superbly to the challenges which lie ahead. (EC
2010, 59)

Another aspect of the DGT’s interest in memory is the Legacy Learn-

ing site for translators, which was created in 2013. This site is on the
DGT intranet and not publicly available. It is an initiative of the English
department, motivated by the large number of upcoming retirements
in that section, and the wish to preserve the knowledge of those long-
serving translators for the benefit of present and future staff. Some
time before translators retire, they are invited to prepare materials to
be uploaded on the site. This may be subject-related knowledge (termi-
nology, useful documents) and information about translation practice
that they have accumulated through years of experience. The site has
 Institutional Memory 157

an interactive feature too in that others can ask these senior transla-
tors questions online, and the answers are stored (Legacy Learning site
coordinator, personal communication 2013).
The totality of present and past DGT textual production (available on
EU websites), including texts in the 24 language versions, can itself be
considered to be an embodiment of collective memory. The repository
of documents dating from the 1950s maintains and archives the mem-
ory of EU objectives, values, negotiations, developments and evolving
policies. With regard to translation, the multiple-language versions of
documents along with style guides (such as the Interinstitutional Style
Guide) and termbanks (currently IATE) embody normative linguistic
and translation practices and choices developed and passed down over
time. Since DGT translations reiterate excerpts from earlier translated
texts and include pre-established lexical renderings, they act as vectors
of textual memory (Brownlie 2012). Such features of DGT translation
practice were remarked on in the translator testimonies collected for
this study.

DGT Collected Memory: Translator Testimonies

The aim of my study of translator testimonies was to apply notions

of memory, in particular the range of different types of memory, in
the undertaking and analysis of face-to-face interviews of a group of
translators at the DGT. I travelled to Brussels in January 2013 and under-
took individual interviews of six French-language translators and eight
English-language translators in the offices of the translators at the DGT
building, 12 rue de Genève.3 DGT translators’ work normally consists of
translating into their native or strongest language from other official EU
languages, such that ‘English (language) translator’, for example, means
that the person translates into English from various other official EU lan-
guages. The reason that the French and English languages were chosen
was for convenience: these are the two languages in which I am fluent.
The limitation to French and English languages (which have a particu-
lar status in the EU) as well as the limited number of interviewees mean
that the findings do not claim to be representative of all DGT transla-
tors. Rather, the findings of this qualitative study provide insights into
a particular group of translators’ experiences and opinions that may be
indicative of a wider group. When approaching the DGT department
heads for permission to do the interviews, I had explained the focus on
memory, and requested that among the translators interviewed there
might be some senior translators. Seven of the eight English-language
translators interviewed had been working at the Commission for more
158 Mapping Memory in Translation

than 20 years, with several working there for 35–36 years. The French-
language translators interviewed had been working at the Commission
for a shorter time, between 7 and 21 years. Capturing the memory of
past experiences of senior translators who are at the close of their careers
resembles the aim of ‘oral history’, except that I also asked questions
about the present, since my conception of memory includes traditions
and group normative practice. The topic of memory provided a basic
framework for fairly wide-ranging interview questions (see Appendix 7.1
for the question schedule). Some interview questions were based on my
prior knowledge of EU texts, translations, resources and procedures, as
well as on previous scholarly studies on EU translation, notably Beaton
(2007) and Koskinen (2008). Although these two researchers based their
analysis on interpreting and translation textual data with different lan-
guages from mine, and furthermore my analysis is of what translators
say in conjunction with translation examples that they cite rather than
of their actual translations, it nevertheless seemed of interest to use ideas
from the findings of previous research. I also took observation notes to
record other aspects of the onsite interview experience: notes on the
material environment and on interaction among the translators. After
returning home, I transcribed and analysed the recorded interviews, and
undertook some correspondence with interviewees in order to check or
supplement details.

Personal Memory: Events, Changes and Roles in the DGT

Translator’s Career
I asked each translator a number of questions about their career (see
Appendix 7.1, Part I). Each story was very personal, a part of autobio-
graphical memory, and yet I was able to establish some common themes
across the set of responses (in the manner of ‘collected’ memory; Olick
1999). One of the questions I asked was how and why the individual
had become a translator at the Commission. One type of reason was
pragmatic: as young people they were looking for a satisfying job. High
competence in and love of languages were naturally prerequisites. Good
salary, security of employment and interesting content and variety in
the range of types of texts and subject areas were certainly motivations.
I observed other attractive aspects of working conditions in the course
of my visit to the DGT: spacious individual offices, excellent equipment
and congenial relations among colleagues. These pragmatic factors help
explain the long careers in the Commission.
In addition to pragmatic factors, there are ideological reasons for
working for the Commission. All translators displayed a belief in what
 Institutional Memory 159

one of them called ‘the cause’. Here are the words of a French-language
translator explaining her career choices; she has worked not only for the
EU but also for the UN:

je travaille pour les institutions parce que c’est plutôt ma philosophie.

C’est mon idéal. J’ai travaillé pour les Nations Unies et pour l’Union
Européenne, parce que je suis profondément convaincu de l’intérêt
et de l’importance de collaborer pour les Européens, mais pour les
peuples du monde entier dans le cas de l’ONU.

[I work for the institutions because it’s my philosophy. It’s my ideal.

I used to work for the UN and now for the EU, because I’m deeply
convinced of the usefulness and importance of collaboration for
Europeans and for the peoples of the world in the case of the UN.]

With regard to professional development, there do not seem to be

opportunities in terms of a clear career ladder of different posts for trans-
lators. There is, however, the possibility of taking on administrative roles
combined with some translation work. I met three senior translators
who recounted this career progression: a work flow manager, an assis-
tant head of unit and a head of unit. One translator pointed out that
many Commission translators are happy to remain in the same job,
since over their career they can accumulate new skills, notably acquiring
new languages. All of the translators interviewed had started work at the
Commission with at least two foreign languages and their native tongue
in accordance with the minimum requirement. Over time they learnt
new EU languages, mainly through classes provided at the Commission,
and often prior to the accession of a new member state and thus the
addition of a new official language that needed to be translated from.
At the time of my visit in January 2013, I met a French translator who
was learning Croatian in preparation for the accession of Croatia in July
2013. As for the number of languages that translators had accumulated
over time and from which they work, one translator interviewed trans-
lates from nine languages; the average number for the group was five
or six languages. The translators interviewed said that learning new lan-
guages was a necessary feature of working for the Commission (at least
for English and French translators) and their attitude was very positive
towards this. Here is a comment from one of them:

Some people might think it’s boring doing the same job for 24 years,
but it’s not exactly the same job. I’ve learnt other languages while
160 Mapping Memory in Translation

I’ve been here. I started with Spanish and French; I added German,
Italian, Greek, and I’m doing a Portuguese class now. I’ve enjoyed the
opportunity to learn a language while at work, and to use it.4

Many of the translators reminisced about the time in 2004 known in

the Commission as the ‘big bang’, when the accession of multiple new
member states led to the major increase of official languages from 11
to 20, putting much pressure on existing Commission translators to
acquire the new languages as well as pressure to employ more translators
and to manage the increased workload by other means. The moments of
accession were counted as major events, signalling one of the important
changes taking place over time.
As well as the increased number of languages, another major change
discussed was the greater range of subject matter due to the EU’s
involvement in a growing number of areas. The numerous Commission
Directorates General (DGs) are the main requesters of translation: the
titles of the DGs give a good idea of the breadth of subject matter trans-
lated and the multiple portfolios.5 Translators do still specialize in broad
subject areas, since they are grouped into thematic units that make up
the language departments; for example, English unit one covers legal,
economic and financial documents, unit two technical and agriculture
(environment, transport, energy, agriculture, fisheries) and unit three
social areas: health, consumer protection, trade and employment. How-
ever, the significant increase in subject matter areas over the years has
resulted in translators not being able to specialize as narrowly as they
did in the past. In addition, translators may work for units other than
their own in cases of work overload in a particular unit. Here is what
one of the English-language translators said:

there’s no one who can say I’m only doing German nuclear doc-
uments, because there probably aren’t enough to keep one person
going, and there are loads of other subject areas that need to be
covered. That’s due to the EU expanding its operations. There are
more and more areas that the Commission is active in, and therefore
more and more subject areas to translate. So there isn’t the luxury of
specializing any more.

The translators also recounted that the structure of the work unit has
changed in that previously a hierarchical system was in place. Much of
the translation at the Commission is reviewed by a second person: a
translation is always revised if the text is for publication, and often for
 Institutional Memory 161

other types of text too. In the past only senior translators were revisers,
whereas now there is ‘peer revision’: any relatively confirmed transla-
tor does revision. One reason given for peer revision was that with the
increased number of source languages, there sometimes are no senior
translators available who know the particular source language. Another
important reason for the breakdown of the hierarchical system is that
in the days before computerization, knowledge was in the heads of the
most senior translators (and their personal filing cards) and only trans-
mitted orally. This role as vessels of knowledge reinforced their status;
they were the respected ‘old sages’, in the words of one English transla-
tor, ‘les vieux bonzes’ in the words of a French translator. Today, much
knowledge is written and available to all electronically. There has thus
been a change from dependence on the human memory of a few people
to reliance on widely available machine memory. Computerization has
contributed to the democratization of memory and of the DGT service.
Despite the flatter hierarchy and the new function of electronic mem-
ory, as translators advance in their careers they still have the important
role of transmitting institutional memory through passing on knowl-
edge of translation practices in the Commission to the next generations
of translators. This happens today through various means: experienced
translators making their translations available in the DGT Translation
Memory; experienced translators formulating written guidelines; and
experienced translators acting as trainers (for training sessions on spe-
cific topics) and in a more ongoing fashion as mentors and revisers. Thus
new translators learn past accumulated knowledge from others and from
knowledge embodied in medial tools and artefacts. Each new translator
is assigned a mentor to guide them when they first arrive, and all the
work of novice translators is revised and proposed revisions discussed
with them. Some translators recounted memories of how, when they
themselves were novices, revision was heavy: the translation was ‘plas-
tered in red ink’; ‘il y en avait qui ré-écrivait tout’ [some revisers rewrote
everything]. Today revision is done with a lighter touch, concentrating
on essential issues in the mode of ‘fit for purpose’. One English trans-
lator who has worked at the Commission for 35 years explained that
he now chooses to spend most of his time (90 per cent) revising; this
is out of personal preference and also because, as he said: ‘I’m a senior
member, I have all this knowledge, and I can pass it on.’
A number of translators noted the greater pressure and less relaxed
work rhythm today. The increased workload for the translation service
resulting from multiple portfolios and the significant increase in num-
ber of languages has had an impact on individual translators. Reference
162 Mapping Memory in Translation

was made to a slower pace of work in the past, a noticeably greater

emphasis on productivity today, and the notion of variable levels of
quality of translation for different purposes as a means of coping with
the workload.6 A French translator, who commenced working at the
Commission at the beginning of the 1990s, expressed the changes as
follows:

Les traducteurs ont toujours été professionnels sur le plan de

l’éthique, mais ils n’étaient pas axés sur le rendement, l’efficience,
le fit for purpose, le just in time. Ce n’était absolument pas l’éthique
dominante quand j’ai commencé. Nous étions à l’excellence pure.
Une traduction se devait d’être excellente whatever the purpose. Et
tant pis pour le délai.

[The translators have always acted professionally with regard to

ethics, but they gave little importance to productivity, efficiency, vari-
able quality fit for purpose, and time constraints. That was definitely
not the reigning ethos when I began. For us it was a matter of pure
excellence. A translation had to be perfect whatever its purpose, and
too bad for deadlines.]

Similarly, an English translator of long date talks about the great deal
of ‘nit-picking’ about English expression that went on in earlier times.
Pressure may also result from the variety of demands placed on the
translators in addition to translating, such as undertaking revision and
evaluation of work done by freelancers. Some translators also feel pres-
sure due to increased surveillance of their work through technological
means.

Electronic Memory: A Major Change

Technological change is one hugely important shift noted by translators,
the effects of which have been multiple – some were already mentioned
in the previous section. All translators, particularly those who have
worked at the Commission since the 1970s and 1980s, spoke of chang-
ing technology producing a significant alteration in work processes.
In the early days of the translation service, translators recorded their
translations on a dictaphone and the text was typed by secretaries in a
typing pool. Some of my translators recall the ‘thundering’ of the man-
ual typewriters: it was like a ‘sewing workshop’. Today translators work
with PCs and sophisticated software, translation memory, multiple data-
banks and internet resources, which allow them to rapidly find required
 Institutional Memory 163

information, parallel texts and terminology. The main tools mentioned

by the translators were Quest, which searches through a number of EU
databases; Euramis, which is the central memory of the DGT; and a
customized version of Translator’s Workbench (Trados), which provides
translation memory software for local management. At the time of the
change from dictaphone to personal computer in the mid-1990s, some
translators had difficulty adjusting, and today some translators find it
somewhat stressful to keep up with the constantly changing technol-
ogy. Nevertheless, the main attitude expressed was very positive. When
asked about the events and changes over her career at the Commission
since she started working there in 1987, one translator said:

Number one is the use of computers [ . . . ] The ease with which you
can look things up has revolutionized our lives. We used to use the
library all the time, we used to consult microfilm [legislation]. That
has been an absolutely massive change, it means that so much is
quicker, and information is available at a touch of the key [ . . . ] I’m
not particularly good at computers, but for work purposes I master it
sufficiently, and it’s superb.

One specific advantage of computerization is that resources such as

termbanks can be easily updated. Although new technology including
the internet has provided translators with the means to provide more
accurate and consistent translations, it is not clear that it necessarily
increases productivity to a significant extent. One translator attributed
this to the time it takes to trawl through all the information and texts
that the electronic systems bring up; in contrast to the past, today there
is almost too much information:

Je crois que les traducteurs qui ont fait ce métier il y a 30 ans

étaient toujours à la recherche d’informations. Il fallait de gros efforts
pour trouver des informations terminologiques, linguistiques, des
informations de fond. Maintenant on a accès à énormément de
choses à partir de notre poste de travail. Souvent on a 20 docu-
ments de référence, cinq bases de données terminologiques, une base
de données juridiques, tout ça pour traduire deux pages. On reçoit
aussi beaucoup d’e-mails avec des conseils du client, du chef, du
terminologue. Parfois on est vraiment submergés d’informations.

[I think that for translators working here 30 years ago there was a
lack of information. It was a big effort to find terminology, info
164 Mapping Memory in Translation

on language and subject matter. Now we have a huge amount of

information available from our work station. Often I’ll have twenty
reference documents, five terminology databases, a legal resources
database, just to translate two pages. We also receive a lot of emails
with advice from the client, our boss, the terminologist. Sometimes
we’re submerged in information.]

Another interviewee said that translators now have to spend time typ-
ing and formatting to produce ready-for-publication texts, which was
not the case previously, and this can slow down the process. Never-
theless, a third translator pointed out that increase in efficiency and
thus productivity is the motivation for further development of tools
at the Commission, such as a new machine translation system that he
reported as highly promising. Indeed, the huge electronic text repos-
itories, repetitive text types and normatively controlled texts with
standardized vocabulary make EU translation particularly suitable for
machine translation.
Computerization and internet use have also had a significant impact
on modes of work. One interviewee, who previously worked for the
Commission freelance, reported that in contrast with the past, freelance
translators today can be given ready access to all Commission resources
since they are in electronic form. Another interviewee reported that he
is a teleworker, working part of the week at home. Telework has devel-
oped as a result of electronic communication. Several French-language
translators referred to the work technique of collaborative translation of
a long text; producing a coherent translation when several people are
translating different parts of the text is made possible by use of a shared
memory. Cooperation, discussion and negotiation among a group of
translators from different departments translating the same source text
into different languages are also facilitated by an electronic discussion
program entitled ‘Note’.
The translators are wary, however, of delegating their job too much to
electronic resources. They expressed the idea that the human–machine
(organic memory and electronic memory) relationship must be a care-
ful partnership. When there are a number of prior translation solutions
proposed from databases, the translator must take responsibility for
the final appropriate choice of rendering. Some of my interviewees
reported that junior translators tend to be too slavish with respect to
prior renderings found in the Commission translation memory and
other electronic sources, whereas they should use their knowledge
and judgement for the case at hand. In addition, translators needed
to ensure the coherence of the translation as a whole in a situation
 Institutional Memory 165

where bits and pieces are taken from a variety of previously translated
texts.

Textual Memory: A Fundamental Feature

Textual memory, the way in which one text embodies the memory of an
earlier text through reuse, is acknowledged by the translators as a fun-
damental part of the work of EU translators. As one interviewee said: ‘La
base du métier, c’est de consulter des texts traduits antérieurement’ [The
basis of the profession is consulting previous translations]. For each job
the translator must be armed with links to a raft of relevant reference
documents. With regard to legislative texts in the public domain, reuse
of past renderings is stringent, particularly for a citation, but also for
terms. It even happens that an inappropriately translated term becomes
part of law and must be reused. As indicated earlier, searching for and
reusing prior texts and previous translations has been enormously facil-
itated by the creation of electronic databases and programs that enable
their ready search and use in documents. One translator explained
that the easy consultation and reuse of prior translations (phrases, sen-
tences) using translation memory software have resulted in a noticeable
qualitative change in the translator’s work:

Cela a changé le regard sur la traduction, parce que nous n’étions

plus créateurs de chaque phrase, nous étions aussi exploitants d’un
fond commun dans lequel on allait piocher dans un souci de ne pas
redoubler d’efforts et de ne pas aussi introduire des incohérences en
retraduisant des choses qui avaient été dites. La traduction prend une
autre apparence: ça devient un peu plus un travail de reformulation
d’existants [ . . . ] On a un trésor de vocabulaire, de phrases, de types
de traduction pour une même tournure, on est responsable de
l’exploitation de ce trésor.

[This changed our outlook on translation, because we no longer cre-

ated every sentence, we also exploited a common resource in order
not to do unnecessary work and not to introduce inconsistencies by
retranslating things that had already been done. Translation takes on
a different quality: it becomes closer to reformulating existing sen-
tences [ . . . ] We have a treasure of vocabulary, sentences, a variety
of renderings of a source text expression, and we’re responsible for
exploiting this treasure.]

Translation work is regulated through the reuse of prior translated

texts. It is also regulated through textual and language practices that
166 Mapping Memory in Translation

are consigned to style guides and termbanks. Translators pointed out

that although regulation may have always existed, it has become more
explicitly formulated over time in written documents, now available
electronically. In the words of a translator speaking of the English Style
Guide: ‘The translators felt the need to codify what they were doing, so
that everybody was singing from the same hymn sheet. It’s something
that develops over time.’ The in-house institutional context lends itself
to a more standardized form of translation than other contexts. Trans-
lators view such regulation with a positive outlook: ‘ça donne un cadre,
c’est une aide’ [it gives you a framework, it’s helpful]. Practices are inher-
ited from the past, but it is important to note that they are continually
evolving. Terminological use, for example, can be challenged; for leg-
islative texts when a new Regulation replaces an old one, terminological
issues can be ‘ironed out’. New terms also evolve, and translational
renderings are discussed and established by teams of translators and ter-
minologists. Indeed, EU text databases and termbanks are not so much
archives as evolving resources (cf. Drugan 2008, 133).

Group Memory: French and English Departments

Today the translation service is organized in language departments.
However, many of the translators interviewed have memories of a dif-
ferent mode of group organization. Between 1989 and 2002 the service
had been organized entirely thematically rather than linguistically (EC
2010, 42). This allowed translators to work alongside colleagues in differ-
ent languages who shared subject areas corresponding to the requester
Directorate Generals. As one English-language translator of agricultural
and technical texts said:

When I walked in in the morning, I walked past the Italian agricul-

tural group, then past the French one, past the German to come to
my office, and down the corridor were the Spanish. We were always
nipping in and out of each other’s offices, asking questions.

The translators interviewed have fond memories of the thematic orga-

nization, but they agree that the current linguistic organization is
necessary for practical reasons, given the increased number of languages
and the necessity at times for work to be distributed across the team of
translators translating into a particular language.
It is noticeable that the English translators and French translators
recounted different memories and experiences related to their linguistic
group affiliation. In the early days of the European institutions, French
 Institutional Memory 167

was the dominant language and the main drafting language. At that
time French translators were mainly translating preparatory documents
for legislation that was drafted in French. After the United Kingdom
and Ireland joined the European Community, during the 1970s and
1980s English-language translators used to translate a great deal of leg-
islation from French, policy documents and outgoing documents. Some
English translators of long date regret that they now see much less of
such policy documents, since these gave them insights into EU think-
ing and plans. The early English translators had an important role in
creating EU terminology in English. On a less optimistic note, among
the English-language translators interviewed one also spoke of the
early responsibility for communicating European ideals to the English-
language member states, and expressed a feeling of limited success in
that task with regard to the United Kingdom:

We spent so long trying to make the European Community, as it was

then, seem like a normal part of government to people in English-
speaking countries, and certainly in England we must have failed
miserably.

The interviewees recounted the gradual change whereby English took

over as the dominant language: it started in the mid-1990s with the
accession of Austria, Finland and Sweden in 1995, and was fully con-
firmed with the raft of accessions in 2004 of a number of Eastern
European countries that had a tradition of learning English rather than
French. The result is that English is now the main drafting language
and main language of in-house communication; French has become
confirmed as a translating language primarily from English for outgo-
ing documents; and English translators are now translating primarily
incoming documents from all the member states, such as communica-
tions with national governments. There is great pressure, therefore, on
the English department to provide competence in all the EU official lan-
guages. Some languages are known as ‘deficit languages’7 because few
translators are competent in them, so the situation of being a ‘general-
ist’ translator is most salient for English translators of deficit languages
who have to translate texts on any subject matter.
Among my translators the perception of the degree of regulation
of the translational product varied between English and French trans-
lators. The difference of perception occurs probably because French
translators deal with more outgoing legislative texts than the English
translators, who deal mainly with incoming texts for which dependence
168 Mapping Memory in Translation

on previous documents, and lexical and stylistic regularity (elements of

textual memory) in translation, may be less essential. Here are two con-
trasting statements about their work from French- and English-language
translators:

C’est un type de traduction qui est hyper-réglementé, c’est très

contraignant, il y a énormément de codes.
[It’s a type of translation that is heavily regulated, it’s very restricting,
there are many rules to follow.]

I don’t think it is terribly regimented. We have a style guide which

I think is very useful because it gives us uniformity.

Two specificities of English translators that were expressed concern the

maintenance of their mother tongue and the UK attitude towards the
EU, alluded to in an earlier quote. Brussels is a bilingual city with French
and Flemish spoken; in their day-to-day lives translators operate in
(one of) those languages. A typical migrant to Brussels who has been
there for many years might find that his or her native tongue has been
affected by the Brussels linguistic environment. The English-language
translators are, however, not ‘typical migrants’, since they are high-level
language experts. Thus adopting residence and even an identity as a
Brussels inhabitant does not entail diminished native-language com-
petence. Here is what one English translator who has worked for the
Commission for 29 years said:

We do very well. A lot of us have been expatriated for a very long

time. We keep abreast of language developments, not just the news
and politics that’s going on back home; we know the latest slang, the
latest jargon, we keep up with things.

English-language translators sometimes feel uncomfortable because of

the traditional reluctance of the United Kingdom about the EU. At the
time of my interviews the issue was very much in the limelight, because
there had been some sensationalist press speculation about Britain with-
drawing from the EU. One English translator spoke about how he regrets
the British attitude:

Obviously we British translators are affected by the politics of the

UK, and it’s very sad that Britain is so detached, because it’s a big
player in the EU, and it could have been much more important, and
 Institutional Memory 169

taken much more seriously, if it hadn’t constantly put itself on the

sidelines, constantly carping and demanding special rights.

National Memory: The Role of Origins

The previous quote suggests that national identity (which is closely
linked to national memory) plays a role for translators. Certainly one
of the self-identifications given by the translators related to a national
entity: England, Scotland, Britain, Ireland, France or Belgium. However,
as EU officials in their work translators are required to put aside any feel-
ing of support for national interests that conflict with EU policy. There
are thus occasions when they relinquish national memory and iden-
tity. A poignant story was recounted by an English-language translator
who is Irish. Prior to working at the Commission he had worked for the
government of the Republic of Ireland in the area of regional policy,
and in his early days as a translator at the Commission he translated
European regional policy documents. On one occasion he was reading
a document to be translated, and his heart sank as he realized that the
European policy detailed in the document would be highly detrimental
to his home country. He went on to translate the document accurately
and impartially.
Language is an aspect of national affiliation, and languages are memo-
rial phenomena in that they are practices handed down from the
past and evolving in the present among diverse groups. The require-
ment of being native speakers of English or French is the foundation
of the translators’ work and links to their national background. The
native-speaker status allows translators to assure quality of output,
including the use of nuances of linguistic expression and appropriate
register such as idiomatic and even fairly colloquial style in certain
documents such as press releases. However, the translators remarked
that any marked regionalism such as ‘a Scottish word’ was rarely
employed.

Transnational Memory: A Transnational Environment

The transnational environment has an impact on translators’ life expe-
riences and identifications. My translators identified themselves in a
range of ways, all having in effect complex multiple identities, depend-
ing on their personal trajectories. Some English-language translators
who had been in Brussels for a very long time identified themselves
as ‘more European then anything else’, particularly in cases where they
had married non-British or non-Irish partners. A number of the French-
language translators are Belgian nationals, and they happily identified
themselves as both Belgian and European. One translator made an
170 Mapping Memory in Translation

explicit distinction between being of a specific nationality in his private

life (British) and a European official in his work life.
Identifying as European relates to the concept of European
transnational unity and harmony. An important originating motivation
for the creation of the European institutions, stated in Robert Schuman’s
famous speech announcing the European Coal and Steel Community
(Schuman 1950), was the desire for durable peace after World War
II. Among the translators, one who had been in Brussels for 37 years
mentioned memory of the war as a reason for wanting to work for
the EU:

The first thing I did when I went to university was to join the
European Society and the UN Students’ Association, because it wasn’t
that many years after the war, and I felt that these kind of things
really had to be supported. There is a bit of that in me still.

The goal of lasting peace has been achieved among EU countries. As

one translator said: ‘le plus grand acquis de l’Union europeéenne, c’est
qu’on a pu préserver la paix’ [the greatest achievement of the EU is that
we have succeeded in maintaining peace]. The use of ‘on’/‘we’ in this
quote indicates identification with Europe and the EU, and rightly so,
because it is through communication, including texts and their transla-
tions, that negotiations and norms have replaced armed conflict. It has
been proposed that shared European memory of war and peace as well as
commonalities in cultural legacy might found a transnational European
identity that accompanies local memory/identities (Bottici & Challand
2013). Indeed, the EU has enacted the legal concept of European cit-
izenship, which the translators noted as being present in texts they
have translated, but generally they felt that on the ground national and
sub-national attachments remained strong.
With regard to language, the EU context has a transnationalizing
impact on the kind of French and English used by the translators.
Belgian translators recounted that they are not permitted to include
Belgicisms in the French that they employ in their translations. Sim-
ilarly, as already mentioned, regional varieties of English or colloqui-
alisms specific to a particular English-language region would usually
not be acceptable. A kind of ‘international French’ and ‘international
English’ are favoured, in the case of the latter partly because many of
the recipients of English translations are non-native speakers of English
in the Commission.
 Institutional Memory 171

Equally, most texts are drafted in English by non-native speakers of

English, such that hybrid Englishes are apparent, sometimes creating
difficulties for the French translators:

De plus en plus l’anglais devient la lingua franca, et donc nous avons

de l’anglais slovaque et de l’anglais cypriote, et ce n’est pas facile de
comprendre.

[More and more English is becoming the lingua franca, and so we get
Slovak English and Cypriot English; it’s not easy to understand.]8

Interestingly, in some situations non-native English expressions can

even be used by English translators in their output as the result of reuse
of a prior text. Here is how one translator explains this:

I’m translating something now where the Germans are replying to a

letter from the Commission. To a certain extent I’ve got to use the
words the Commission has used, although actually it’s not terribly
well drafted. The letter’s probably written by a non-native speaker,
but for the sake of consistency, so that the person gets the same words
back that he used, it’s best to use his words.

The combination of foreign-language speakers and translation activ-

ity within the EU institutions has from the start led to mixing of
memorial linguistic traditions, producing both gallicized English, for
example ‘axis’ (meaning ‘priority’), and anglicized French, for example
‘approche’ calqued on the English ‘approach’. Such examples reported
by the translators were accompanied by expressions of either mild
annoyance or resigned acceptance.

Institutional Memory: The DGT and the EU

In terms of institutional memory and identity, I shall first consider the
DGT as an institutional unit, before reflecting on the EU institutions
as a whole. There has been improvement over the years in the status
of the translation service. Initially appended to the Directorate General
for Personnel and Administration, since 2002 it has been a fully fledged
Directorate General (EC 2010, 42). It seems that translation has gained
a more prominent status over time, which is no doubt related to the
proliferation of languages and the huge amount of translation activity.
One or two translators acknowledged a positive impact of the service
becoming a DG, since a strong Director General could ‘fight on [their]
172 Mapping Memory in Translation

behalf’. However, despite the current status of the service and of the
translators as EU officials, a number of the translators interviewed felt
that their work is not well known and that its importance is not given
full recognition, either by the general public or within the Commission.
However, this situation does not seem to bother them unduly. As one
unit head said:

We’re a victim of our own success. We’re producing it, it’s getting
out there, it’s being used, but people take it for granted, and they
forget about us to a certain extent, and that’s not a bad thing. We’re
not prima donnas, we should be proud of our achievements, but we
don’t have to be in the spotlight.

Institutional memory concerns the history of organizational changes

over time, and also, importantly, more or less standardized work prac-
tices that have developed over time and are passed on within the insti-
tutional group. In our case this creates a particular DGT textual identity.
Translators acting as revisers and mentors, and electronic resources
including text repositories, termbanks and style guides, are essential
vectors of institutional language and translation practice. Translational
practices and norms, as already mentioned, began to be established
early on. One English translator who started at the Commission in 1976
explains that great care was taken in the early days of English trans-
lation of legislative texts because ‘[w]e regarded every translation as a
precedent for the future’. Today, translators are particularly aware of
DGT translational and linguistic norms and practices when dealing with
external freelance translators who work for the Commission. A French
translator explained this as follows:

parfois on n’est pas satisfait des free-lance. La traduction est bonne,

ils ont bien compris, le français est tout à fait acceptable, mais ils
n’ont pas respecté les normes d’ici, les normes de la maison [ . . . ] soit
de la typographie, soit du vocabulaire, soit des formules de politesse,
l’utilisation des majuscules ou des minuscules.

[sometimes we’re not happy with freelancers. The translation is good,

they’ve understood the text well, their French is totally acceptable,
but they haven’t followed our norms, our in-house norms [ . . . ]
whether it’s a matter of typography, vocabulary, politeness formulae,
or the use of capital and small letters.]

Consideration of institutional language practices can be extended more

generally to the EU institutional context. In her study of EU Finnish
 Institutional Memory 173

translations, Koskinen (2008) suggested the idea that there is a kind of

undecidability in EU texts, a tension between EU institutionalization of
language and readability. She linked this to a mixed identification of EU
translators as both EU officials and Finnish nationals. With regard to
specifically European Union terminology, my interviewees considered
EU terms to be a natural and normal phenomenon: specific European
concepts require their own terminology. Some English translators are
not happy about the particular jargon chosen, but acknowledged that
now the EU is stuck with it. Most interestingly, they pointed out that
so-called Eurojargon is now being used in UK and Irish government
departments and the press: it then becomes part of the English language
to the extent of no longer being recognized as Eurojargon. An exam-
ple is the term ‘subsidiarity’. However, there is also internal, potentially
questionable EU usage that is not so well established. One English trans-
lator recounted how she strives to avoid it; for example, she would use
‘outsource’ or ‘contract out’ rather than ‘externalize’. With regard to syn-
tactical complexity in EU texts, it was considered that there may well be
good reason for this in legislative texts that cover complex issues and
nuances, and in such cases translators may be wary about not remain-
ing close to the original expression. There is also the question of texts
that are the result of difficult political negotiations, where convoluted
language may be deliberate (cf. Cao 2007, 72). However, a historical
development was also noted. Translators recounted that today there is
greater importance accorded to simplicity and clarity of expression, both
in original texts and in translations, than in the past. With regard to
French, one translator explained the situation in a poetic manner:

Les collègues il y a 25 ans voulaient faire du Marcel Proust, donc à

force de vouloir écrire des textes très beaux, c’était plus difficile à
comprendre.

[Our colleagues 25 years ago wanted to write like Marcel Proust,

and the very beautiful texts they produced were more difficult to
understand.]

In addition, there are the issues of linguistic transnationalization men-

tioned in the previous section. It seems that a more complex picture
than a binary tension between readability and institutionalization of
texts in a particular language is provided. There is a complex weave of
the maintenance of national memory through the use of language spo-
ken in various nations, the maintenance and creation of transnational
174 Mapping Memory in Translation

European language and the influence of Euro-terminology on language

used in member states. Translators emphasized that the exact usage in
a particular case is highly sensitive to specific types of text and prospec-
tive readers, and governed by the in-house normative practices. Most
importantly, there is an ongoing evolution of usages. The situation of
multiple fluid identities of the translators and other EU agents is paral-
leled by the complexity of EU language use. Overall, the linguistic mix
combines national and transnational forces to carry forth the negotia-
tions and communication work of the Union. It is interesting to note
that just as legal and political links between national entities and the
transnational union are forged, entailing transformations in member
states, so the languages through which this relationship is negotiated
evolve and become intertwined.
Ideology is an important feature of institutional memory. With regard
to international organizations, fundamental values and objectives are
normally set out in charters, mission statement documents and regu-
lations right from the establishment of the institution. The European
institutions’ multilingual language policy dates from Council Regula-
tion no. 1 of 1958: it stipulates that each member state may nominate
a language as an official language (see Council EEC 1958 and amend-
ments). At that time there were only 4 official languages; today there are
24. My translators acknowledged the legal necessity of translation into
different languages, since laws must be in national languages. They also
pointed out that communication and translation in different languages
have important democratic ramifications, thus the multilingualism pol-
icy is linked to EU values. A provision of the language policy that relates
to the value of democracy is the right of citizens to communicate in their
own language with Union institutions. The English-language translators
are particularly aware of this, since most of their work concerns translat-
ing incoming documents from the member states into English. As one
of the translators explained:

We get a lot of letters from individuals, and they’re all taken seriously
[ . . . ] Some are a bit ridiculous: I have had the odd one where the
neighbour’s trees were growing too high, and could the Commission
do something about it? But sometimes it’s basic rights of citizens like
people in East European countries who don’t have any connection to
the electricity grid [ . . . ] It’s normally an individual that writes. The
Commission will reply, even if to say it’s not within the scope of the
Commission’s work. But surprisingly often the Commission can do
something.
 Institutional Memory 175

Translation plays a role in giving some power to individual citizens and

increasing democratic participation. Outgoing translation, by means of
which EU-authored documents and information are translated into the
23 languages and made widely available in print form and importantly
on internet sites, also has a democratic motivation. One of the French-
language translators expressed this explicitly as being the very reason
for the translators’ work:

La recherche de rendre l’union plus démocratique, de se rapprocher

du citoyen, c’est notre travail quotidien, parce que si on traduit c’est
pour rendre l’union et sa législation plus accessible aux citoyens des
différents états membres.

[Seeking to make the Union more democratic, coming closer to the

citizen, this is our daily work, because if we’re translating, it’s in order
to make the Union and its legislation more accessible to citizens of
the different member states.]

Two translators remarked that the EU is still often perceived as a remote

organization with a ‘democratic deficit’, but the situation would be
much worse if communication and textual production did not occur
in citizens’ own languages. Another aspect mentioned by one trans-
lator was the notion that multilingualism serves to support minority
languages, and equates with the EU aim of achieving ‘diversity in unity’.
However, the translators also expressed scepticism with regard to the
multilingualism policy. They pointed out that languages do not in real-
ity have equal status, since English, French and German (the ‘procedural
languages’) have a privileged status: these languages may be used for in-
house purposes, with English employed most frequently today. It is also
true that not everything is translated into every official language. One
translator recounted that many brochures and internet sites only exist
in a few languages. Furthermore, some of the translators explained that
the proliferation of official languages has in a sense led to a reduction
of multilingualism, since in many circumstances multilingual function-
ing becomes impossible with so many languages, and the lingua franca,
English, is used instead and thus reinforced.
In the very first European treaty establishing the Coal and Steel Com-
munity (1952), the embryonic version of a statement of general values
is present, for example the aims of peace and improvement of people’s
well-being through raising standards of living. In succeeding European
treaties the values were more elaborately and explicitly formulated.
176 Mapping Memory in Translation

In the acceptance speech made when the EU was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize (van Rompuy & Barroso 2012), emphasis was placed on val-
ues at the core of the union – peace, freedom, justice, human dignity,
equality, rule of law, respect for human rights, democracy and har-
mony. The foundational values are important in creating a transnational
institutionalized space that operates through maintaining memory of
those values, as well as concretizing and developing their manifesta-
tions. I questioned translators as to the presence of such values in the
texts they translated. Whether translators were aware of values being
expressed in their texts depended on the content of the texts being
translated. One translator, who carries out work for the European Court
of Justice, said that the European values are definitely important in such
texts:

là on est toujours dans les principes fondamentaux, fondateurs de

l’union, le principe de libre concurrence, de démocratie, de paix, de
libre circulation. Ça reste au-delà de tous les conflits entre entreprises,
les conflits entre autorités judiciaires, ça reste vraiment présent.

[here you always have the fundamental principles founding the

union, the principles of free competition, democracy, peace, free
movement. That remains above and beyond all the conflicts
between businesses, the conflicts between judicial authorities, it’s
very present.]

In contrast, a translator who translates texts dealing with technical

subject matter and relations with member states said the following:

It’s more a basic civil service conversation between two parties. [ . . . ]

It’s the bread-and-butter issues of money concerning agricultural and
fisheries spending on one side, and in terms of transport, passen-
ger safety. It’s more pragmatic and down to earth than the general
European ideal. It’s about knowing whether a train is going to crash
because of faulty lines.

This quote shows that although the details of a document may be highly
technical, there are underlying values such as the well-being of citizens
across the Union, which is to be secured through the goal of ensuring
common norms across Europe, linking thus also to the value of harmo-
nization. One translator also said that she had translated texts that put
established values into question:
 Institutional Memory 177

il y a eu un exemple récemment avec la libre circulation, quand il y a

eu le problème en Libye, l’afflux des réfugiés en Italie. Il y a eu des tas
de textes qui disaient que les frontières il fallait peut-être les rétablir.
[There was an example recently with freedom of movement, when
there was the problem in Libya and the massive arrival of refugees
in Italy. There were a lot of texts which said that maybe the borders
should be established again.]

This indicates that how values and principles are worked out in practice
may develop over time. Through translating texts that communicate
the values directly or indirectly (or even challenge them), transla-
tors play a role in transmitting these values, as well as conveying the
multiple technical issues that are expressed. Whether through commu-
nication between individual citizen/member state and Commission, or
through outgoing mass communication in multiple languages, transla-
tion acts to propagate values by enabling, extending and disseminating
communications.
Beaton (2007) has found that European Parliament interpreters tend
to reinforce values such as European unity through repetition and the
use of particular metaphors. My translators envisaged a few circum-
stances where reinforcing values might be possible, for example if the
source text was unclear and clearer expression in translation inad-
vertently strengthened the ideas expressed. However, most often the
suggestion of strengthening of values was met with disapproval, as the
following comment displays: ‘We translate the words, we’re here to
translate somebody else’s message.’
Certainly it was felt to be important for an EU translator to have
knowledge of the historical development of the Union, its project,
its aims and values. One senior translator pointed out that he has
noticed translation errors made because a novice translator lacked such
knowledge.
Although translators strongly support the European project in its over-
all aims and values, this does not mean that they always agree with
all Commission thinking and policies, and they are sometimes disap-
pointed in Commission actions or lack of action, a case of the latter
being the slowness of reaction at the start of the 2008 financial cri-
sis. Disagreement can be at the macro-level of economic trends and
approaches. One translator expressed strong disagreement with the EU’s
austerity policies in place at the time. Another was unhappy about what
178 Mapping Memory in Translation

he perceived as the more neo-liberal economic approach applied today

compared with earlier days when the French socialist Jacques Delors was
at the head of the Commission. Disagreement may also concern more
specific decisions and policies. I asked translators whether they had been
in the situation of having to translate a document whose content they
did not agree with. For most translators this was not a common occur-
rence, but it did happen. When I asked translators what they did in this
case, all replied that they would translate faithfully and neutrally; and
only exceptionally rarely would a text be passed on to be translated by
somebody else. A case recalled was a vegetarian being dispensed from
translating documents on slaughterhouses. One interviewee explained
the situation as follows:

Que le traducteur soit d’accord ou pas avec le contenu d’un texte,

son travail consiste à traduire le texte. On peut avoir ses idées à
titre personnel et privé, mais en tant que fonctionnaire européen,
ça n’intervient pas dans le cadre du travail.

[Whether the translator agrees or not with the contents of a text, his
or her job consists in translating the text. You can have your personal
ideas, but as a European official, that doesn’t intervene in your work.]

The key words here are ‘fonctionnaire européen’, ‘European official’.

Commission translators are European officials, who as such are bound
by the Staff Regulations, which stipulate conduct in accordance with
the interests of the Union and carrying out assigned duties objec-
tively, impartially and in keeping with the duty of loyalty to the Union
(EC 2004, article 11). The EU memorial values are thus also upheld
through formalized means that secure translators’ ideological loyalty.
Although translators adopt the status of quiet workers, they contribute
significantly to the remediation of texts, which is the condition for
maintaining memory of the objectives set by the early founders of the
European institutions and the ensuing developments, such that the EU
has become not only a political but also a symbolic force, a memory site
(Erll 2009).

Concluding Methodological and Theoretical Reflections

In the context of a group of translators who had been working in the

same institution for a considerable period of time, the memory-focused
approach, taking memory in a broad sense with its range of types and
 Institutional Memory 179

contents, proved useful in undertaking the interviews and in analysis

of interview material. The approach provided an in-depth picture of the
translators’ past and present work and experiences. Combining study of
both collective memory (notably the DGT history book) and collected
memory (interviews with the translators) allowed triangulation, in that
findings overlap and thus reinforce each other with regard to the major
events, changes and the nature of translation work in the institutional
setting. The collected memory approach is enriching, since it captures
many voices and can provide various opinions and additional insights
compared with a method that provides one official voice, as in an official
history. However, a noticeable aspect of my experience in interviewing
translators was their lack of precise memory of dates and certain details
(a common feature of autobiographical memory). So, recourse to the
official history was useful for verifying dates and facts. Collected and
collective approaches are thus nicely complementary.
With regard to memory studies theorization, the fact that it was dif-
ficult in the analysis of translator testimonials to categorize material
into the sections on different types of memory is a strong indication
that the relationship between the different types of memory is not so
much that they are distributed (a word that gives the impression of sep-
arate portions), but rather that they are intimately intertwined. Hoskins
(2011) suggests the interesting mechanism whereby cognitive memory
extends into the world then loops back, since we externalize memory
then re-perceive it in the externalized form (a written text, a photo,
a friend’s words etc.). In my study the personal, electronic, textual,
group, national, transnational and institutional inter-relate in various
ways. Here are examples of such inter-relations: each individual transla-
tor expressed personal memory in recounting his or her experiences, but
the similarities across all the narratives were such that a clear sense of
DGT group memory emerged; the fundamental feature of reuse of ear-
lier texts constituting textual memory was seen to be greatly facilitated
by electronic memory; there seemed to be some tensions between the
national and the transnational; and, importantly, institutional memory
with regard to both ideology and textual practices was shown to embody
elements of the other types of memory.

This chapter has examined the question of institutional memory, tak-

ing translation at the DGT of the European Commission as the topic
for a case study with a particular focus on translators’ testimonies.
Having mainly concentrated on various types of memory separately
in past chapters, the case study here highlights their combination and
180 Mapping Memory in Translation

interconnections. Indeed, it seems that in order to better comprehend

certain situations, it is necessary to take into account a range of types of
memory and their relations.

Appendix 7.1

DGT Interviews: Questions

I Autobiographical Memory
1. Can you tell me how long you’ve been working as a translator at the
European Commission?
2. How and why did you become a translator at the European Commis-
sion?
3. What have been the main events in your career at the European
Commission?
4. How has the nature of your work (type of task, texts translated)
changed over the years?
5. What are the main challenges in your work today? Has this changed
over time?
6. How and why has the organization of the Translation services/your
section changed?
7. How and why have work flow procedures changed?

II Institutional and Textual Memory

1. To what extent do you feel that your translating work is constrained
by institutional drafting guidelines, by style guides, and by lexical
equivalence resources such as the IATE termbank?
2. How have these normative instruments changed over time?
3. How do you use prior existing translations in your work? How has
this changed over time?
4. As a senior translator, what is your role in passing on translational
practices and norms of the DGT (e.g. to recently arrived translators)?
5. What is the role of creativity, discussion and negotiation in your
translation work?
6. To what extent does this negotiation involve other language units?
7. Are established norms/practices challenged? (Cf. Drugan 2008, 133 –
TM and terminology resources evolving.)

III National and Transnational Memory

1. Would you agree that the EU multilingualism policy reinforces EU
values of integration, equality and democracy? How has this evolved
over time, and impacted on the status of translation in the EU?
 Institutional Memory 181

2. To what extent do you have a sense of the presence of

EU ideology (peace, harmony, unity, citizens’ well-being, free
trade/movement . . . ) embedded in texts that you translate, and the
translations? (Cf. Beaton 2007 – interpreting increases ideologi-
cal aspects, e.g. through repetition of key terms, extended use of
common metaphors, such as the EU is a ship.)
3. Have you ever been in the situation of not agreeing with policy
documents/content of documents that you’re translating?
4. Do you feel a tension in terms of your personal identity? A ten-
sion between your national identity and relations to general readers
in/from the UK–Ireland/France–Belgium, and your identity as an EU
official producing texts for an EU in-group?
5. How is your personal identity manifested in your translation work?
(Cf. Koskinen 2008 – study of drafting policy documents, translator
discussions and textual products reveals fundamental undecidability
between readability and institutionalization.)
6. Have you noticed the notion of a transnational European identity
for individuals (‘EU citizenship’, first officially mentioned in the
Maastricht Treaty) becoming stronger over time? What is the role
of texts and their translations in this process?
8
Cosmopolitan Connective
Memory

Now almost at the end of our journey, this final chapter engages with
the global level of communication and memory. Assmann and Conrad
(2010, 7) consider that memory has entered the global arena in four
ways: a global public sphere requiring global accountability has led
to a plethora of apologies for wars and colonial wrongs; global mem-
ory claims from wars and colonialism have led to notions of universal
morality and respect of diversity; all levels of memory have come to be
informed by the global context, for example consciousness of regional
memory binding areas together has developed; and memorial globaliza-
tion has occurred from below with grassroots activist movements and
the worldwide diffusion of popular cultural products. In this chapter the
focus will be primarily on this final category, but first some definitions
of the terms ‘connective’ and ‘cosmopolitan’ memory are required.
The term ‘connective memory’ was coined by Andrew Hoskins (2011).
For Hoskins the characteristics of our contemporary media and the ways
in which people use media have led to a qualitative difference in how
we relate to memory today. This difference concerns three types of con-
nection: the easy and immediate connection of individuals across vast
geographical spaces through electronic means, notably the internet; the
easy and immediate connection of people with the past, since due to
the huge capacity of electronic memory and storage vast amounts of
information about the past are available at a click of the mouse; and the
connection of the self to an array of devices and networks in the mode
of distributed memory. Furthermore, major news events that occur are
broadcast immediately around the world, and there is little time to con-
sign an event to memory before fresh events are broadcast; the result is
a race into the future. Connective memory refers to the pervasiveness of
digital media and the digital archive, and the immediacy and increasing
simultaneity of past, present and future.

182
 Cosmopolitan Connective Memory 183

The term ‘cosmopolitan memory’ was coined by Daniel Levy and

Natan Sznaider (2006). These scholars highlighted how the Holocaust
has a particular role with regard to memory. It was an event that has
proved both impossible and compelling to talk about; an event that is
universally known; and an event that has become an icon of inhuman-
ity. As an icon, the Holocaust is cited in connection with other cases
of genocide around the world in instances of multidirectional memory
(Rothberg 2009). Furthermore, Levy and Sznaider posit that memory
of the Holocaust has a global role with regard to human rights, con-
stituting a powerful symbol of what must not be repeated, or the use
of memory futuristically. My own use of ‘cosmopolitan’ relates to all
kinds of shared memory at a global level. Whereas ‘transnational mem-
ory’ could simply concern two countries, ‘cosmopolitan’ concerns the
global; that is, globally shared knowledge of others’ pasts and tradi-
tions. The term also evokes the philosophy of cosmopolitanism (see
Delanty 2009), based on the concept of human rights and the idea of
global citizenship, whereby an individual may embrace an affinity and
empathy with global others as one of his or her identifications. My com-
bination ‘cosmopolitan connective memory’ highlights the idea that
today’s (potential for) cosmopolitan memory relies on the electronic
connectivity of the contemporary world.
‘Cosmopolitan connective memory’ is forged largely through global
intercultural communication; that is, communication around the globe
traversing linguistic, cultural and geographical borders. It can also
be conceived as traversing temporal and aesthetic borders. This com-
munication includes interpersonal interaction, the communication of
cultural products and the communication of ideas. All these types of
communication are found in an important means by which global
links are made today: the circulation and discussion of popular cultural
products, particularly via electronic tools and the internet (Williams &
Zenger 2012). With regard to the role of history in popular culture,
Jerome De Groot (2009) finds that there is a veritable ‘historiocopia’,
an overflowing of abundant memorial meaning in a huge range of
contemporary cultural forms, including historical fiction, video games,
re-enactments, television documentaries, plays, musicals, film and tele-
vision costume dramas and adaptations of period novels. All of these
can in turn be remediated through the internet in various ways.
In Chapter 5 I discussed Anne Rigney’s (2004) argument that fictional
forms such as novels are an exceptionally powerful vehicle for transmit-
ting memory. This is because humans warm to the narrative form (with
intrigue and outcome), can empathize with individual characters, and
184 Mapping Memory in Translation

appreciate aesthetic and moral qualities of the literary work. All these
features make the fictional work memorable, and thus also the histor-
ical setting and events embodied in the work. Rigney suggests that by
virtue of its properties the literary form is particularly suitable for travel-
ling and creating cross-border memories. For her part, Alison Landsberg
(2004) highlights the importance of the experiential for memory, which
is afforded by certain types of cultural product. Cultural products such
as films, theatre productions, artworks and contemporary museum dis-
plays constitute strong performative acts of memory, generating an
experience of the past in the present. A powerful vicarious experience
of a past event may result in ‘prosthetic memory’, memories almost the
same as if one had actually experienced the event. Cultural products that
strongly engage the senses and emotions have a particular experiential
force, and this force allows these products to be appreciated transnation-
ally and transculturally, with contemporary technologies and transfer
capabilities providing the conditions for their international mobility.
Globally propagated mass culture creates the possibility of people who
share a limited amount in common in terms of cultural background
coming to share certain knowledge and memories (Landsberg 2004).
Today’s developing digital connectivity and digital technologies con-
tribute new dimensions. The impact of cultural products is reinforced
through ever wider and quicker dissemination, and through the pos-
sibility of internet users’ interaction with each other in discussion of
cultural products, as well as grassroots creativity in the reuse and trans-
formation of such products. An individual, for example, may sample
and remix music and video content to create their own films that are
posted and shared worldwide on YouTube. Participatory popular cul-
ture across borders enhances shared global knowledge as well as glocal
meshing through reuse of popular culture products for local purposes
(Williams & Zenger 2012, 1).
A cultural product will include different types of memorial features,
whether these are references to cultural customs and traditions, or ref-
erences to historical events. The cultural product itself may have a
history as an iconic product of its sphere of origin, as we have seen
in the cases of Zola’s and Scott’s works. Thus, the global communi-
cation of cultural products can lead to the spread of memory of the
product itself, and of knowledge of the cultural customs and histories to
which it refers. People in various parts of the world may link the foreign
cultural product to local concerns and histories, finding analogies in
difference, and thus forging multidirectional memory (Rothberg 2009).
Multidirectional memory brings together histories from different parts
 Cosmopolitan Connective Memory 185

of the globe that may at first sight seem quite distant in time and geogra-
phy, as in the case study for this chapter where the revolutions in France
(1789–1832) are linked to twentieth- and twenty-first-century events
and traditions in very different parts of the world such as Taiwan. In a
similar way as was discussed for transnational memory (Chapter 5), cos-
mopolitan connective memory consists not only of shared knowledge
of other people’s histories and cultural products from around the globe,
but also awareness of comparative history, linking histories together.
It is through such interactions and local uptakes of global products that
global communities are formed.
However, two important issues need to be mentioned. First, cultural
forms for the general public (popular novels, television, cinema, muse-
ums) often present a simplified or even distorted view of history as
compared with a work of academic historiography. It could be argued
that the simplified memorial depiction in popular cultural products is
actually a type of forgetting. Yet all memory involves forgetting, since
memory is necessarily a process of selection. Furthermore, any presen-
tation of history involves narrative elements, whether popular forms
(such as historical novels, filmed costume dramas and television docu-
mentaries) or academic historiography, so the difference is not as great
as might be thought. Another consideration alluded to earlier is that a
literary or filmic product may present insights and engagements regard-
ing the past that a history book does not, such as sensory, emotional
and empathic elements. Grainge (2003, 6) affirms that although histori-
ans may criticize Hollywood films for sensationalizing history, the films
are a powerful and influential way of engaging with the past. Similarly
with respect to television history, Hunt (2004) argues that television his-
tory plays the important role of potentially reaching millions of people
who would otherwise remain ignorant. He points out that television
history should not be regarded in the same light as academic research,
since its purpose is to excite and inform a broad public, not to push the
boundaries of scholarship in the same way as a monograph or journal
article. Television history has the capacity to broaden the understand-
ing of a large number of people through powerful multimedial means,
to encourage viewers to seek further knowledge and to generate public
debate. The second issue is that when a popular culture product relating
to memory is appropriated elsewhere in the world, the other’s mem-
ory may be overshadowed by the present purposes of the borrowing
cultural group. In other words, the question can be asked whether the
multidirectional memory link entails an enriching cultural learning pro-
cess, or whether it is a matter of a superficial, opportunistic reuse of the
186 Mapping Memory in Translation

other’s history, with the trivial aspect exacerbated by popular cultural

forms. This is similar to what Halstead (2015) refers to as ‘off-the-peg
memories’ used in newspaper articles: memories of international events
are employed in a formulaic and decontextualized manner where com-
parison sacrifices the specificity of others’ histories in order to shore up
a portrayal of one’s own group’s fate. It could be argued, however, that
even if the link through popular culture with another cultural group’s
history and traditions is fairly superficial, it still plays the role of building
some shared knowledge across a broad transnational range of people.
The particular type of cultural product that is the object of the case
study in this chapter is a song from a musical. As such, it embodies
attractive memorial properties mentioned earlier: narrative, aesthetic,
ideational and experiential features. With regard to songs and music, it
has been argued that music is a cultural form that is particularly capable
of crossing borders: ‘sounds carry across fences and walls and oceans,
across classes, races and nations’ (Frith 1996, 125). Music acts as a vec-
tor of emotion, conveying emotions and influencing people’s emotions.
Studies have shown that the same affective associations with musical
characteristics such as tempo and key are present cross-culturally, if
not universally (Hunter & Schellenberg 2010, 139). For example, a slow
tempo and a minor key evoke sadness. Thus music is a particularly apt
vehicle of global intercultural communication. Songs usually combine
music and lyrics. With regard to language issues in the globalization of
cultural products, although English is often referred to as the contem-
porary lingua franca, in fact vast swaths of the world’s population are
not proficient in English (Mufwene 2010, 45). Interlingual translation
is thus necessary for communication to have a truly global reach. Fur-
thermore, it seems that the affective incorporation of a ‘foreign’ cultural
product is significantly enhanced through its reshaping in accordance
with local practices and objectives, an important aspect of which is
translation into the local language.

Do You Hear the People Sing?

The case study concerns the song ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’ (see a
link to the lyrics in Appendix 8.1), which comes from the musical Les
Misérables. The musical is based on Victor Hugo’s famous novel of the
same name published in 1862. Set in early nineteenth-century France,
Hugo’s novel traces the story of ex-convict Jean Valjean against the
background of the plight of the poor and of revolutionary republican-
ism. Les Misérables is one of the most adapted works of the Western
 Cosmopolitan Connective Memory 187

literary canon. It has given rise to multiple adaptations in different

parts of the world and in different languages: print adaptations and
translations, plays, films, television series, animated versions and video
games. Certainly many novels originating in the same era have long
fallen into obscurity. For Stephens (2013), the reasons for the longevity
and continued after-life of Hugo’s novel include the aesthetic qualities
of superlative narrative, archetypal characters with universal emotions,
and also the enduringly relevant themes of moral development and
social justice. The musical Les Misérables was composed by French
composer-lyricist team Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil, and
was performed for a short run in France in 1980. The English-language
version of the musical enjoyed great success from its first year of per-
formances in 1985, and it is now the longest-running musical in the
West End of London. As for international productions, the musical has
been performed in 42 countries, both in English and in 22 different
language versions. The 2012 film of the musical featuring big-name
Hollywood stars – Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway and
Amanda Seyfried – made the musical even more well known globally.
The internet has played an important role in propagating the musi-
cal and our song in particular. For example, a number of clips of the
song from the 2012 film feature on YouTube with foreign-language
subtitles.1
In the musical, ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’ is sung before the
depiction of the 1832 uprising in Paris and fighting on the barricades.
Rather than the musical theatre setting, my interest is in how the song
‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’ has been used outside the theatre by
groups around the world. It has been translated into more language
versions than the 22 mentioned above, and even into sign language.
Groups perform the song in flash mobs or more staged performances in
a range of public places: in streets, in public buildings, on the steps in
front of significant buildings, in squares, parks, shopping centres, train
stations, trains, libraries and churches. The song is sung in public places
in some cases for fun, and in other cases for serious purposes in a vari-
ety of different protests and demonstrations. Many of these events have
been filmed and the video clips made available on social media sites.
On YouTube there are also video compilations with images that are
totally unrelated to the musical or a performance of the song; the song
in English or a foreign language is used as the soundtrack of the video.
This situation where the song has been translated into many languages,
is very widely sung in the musical, is widely sung and used outside the
original theatre setting in many different contexts, and is disseminated
188 Mapping Memory in Translation

in different ways via the internet has contributed to it having a global

reach.
The case study focuses on the performance of the song as part of
demonstrations around the world. Uprisings and demonstrations are
a long-standing human practice, and at various times in history there
have been waves of protest simultaneously in a number of different
places. It seems that starting in 2011 there was a global wave of protests:
the Arab Spring protests, Spanish Indignados 15-M movement, Occupy
encampments, the Turkey protests and Hong Kong sit-ins, among oth-
ers. Flesher Fominaya (2014) finds that although these movements relate
to specific local/national issues, they also share the transnationally dif-
fused master frames of concern about inefficient or deficient democracy,
and about the negative effects of neo-liberal global capitalism. Social
movements involve cultural resistance; that is, the use of cultural prod-
ucts such as songs, chants, banners, propaganda, manifestos and so on
for the purpose of political resistance. Cultural products can thus be
a resource for activism, solidarity and empowerment (Sorrells 2013).
In the process of transnational diffusion, a cultural product is often
transformed so that it is reinvigorated creatively, and becomes maxi-
mally resonant with the new cultural group (Flesher Fominaya 2014,
45, 47). We will see that this has happened in our particular case. The
song ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’ has been used in a great variety
of types of manifestations, both large-scale uprisings like those already
mentioned and small, localized events, such that the global diffusion
of this cultural product for activist purposes involves many different
causes. The use of this song was chosen for study because it presents
a worldwide scenario involving various human rights causes, and is a
phenomenon of global intercultural communication that contributes to
the creation of cosmopolitan connective memory. I will illustrate the
mechanisms at macro- and micro-levels by which the song has become
a global phenomenon, and undertake a detailed study of a Taiwanese
performance of it.

Global Intercultural Communication across Space: Commonality

and Diversity
As mentioned earlier, this song has been sung in a tremendous variety
of places and contexts in relation to a range of political and human
rights issues. Here are some examples of performances of the song in
English: people protesting in Madison, Wisconsin in 2011 about the
governor’s budget repair bill, which entailed stripping public employees
and unions of collective bargaining rights2 ; in 2013 inhabitants of the
 Cosmopolitan Connective Memory 189

Figure 8.1 Use of the song title as a slogan and banner. Hong Kong protests for
democracy, 2014

small town of Tecoma in Australia protesting about the planned con-

struction of a McDonald’s outlet3 ; and at the beginning of 2014 high
school students protesting in British Columbia about the government
reneging on its promise to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the plan
to increase fossil fuel exports. Recent examples of the song being sung
in other language versions are the following: people sung it in Turkish
in Gezi Park during the protests against the government in 20134 ; in
March 2014 a Ukrainian version was sung by students calling people
to join in protests at Maidan during the period of civil conflict around
the issue of EU accession; in July 2014 it was sung by Singaporeans in
a protest to gain more transparency and accountability with regard to
the Central Provident Fund (CPF) system; in May 2014 a Cantonese ver-
sion was sung in Hong Kong during protests about the People’s Republic
of China’s disregard of its promise regarding democratic elections in
Hong Kong (see the protest banner in Figure 8.1); and it was sung during
a large-scale public demonstration that took place in Taiwan in August
2013 in order to call for improvement in human rights issues in the mil-
itary and for a fair investigation into a corporal’s death that occurred
during his military service – this is the case discussed later.5
Videos that use the song as a soundtrack also cover a range of contexts,
including the 2013–15 protests and conflicts in Brazil, Thailand, Egypt,
Syria, Ukraine, Malaysia and Hong Kong, as well as civil rights protests
in the United States, political protests in Australia and videos on the
fate of the Armenians and on LGBT6 rights. So the song is used for a
190 Mapping Memory in Translation

great diversity of situations and themes, but despite such diversity there
is evident commonality: every situation involves a call for the ordinary
people’s voice to be heard, for grassroots democracy, and every situa-
tion involves an issue of human rights in its multiple senses. Notions
such as ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, ‘rights’, ‘welfare’ and ‘sovereignty’ are
what Appadurai (1996, 37) calls ideoscapes – elements of the Enlighten-
ment world view that have travelled and mixed with local perspectives,
uptakes and contexts worldwide. The use of the same song serves to
link all the various contexts and issues, and to communicate the ide-
ological commonality within that diversity all around the world. On a
practical level this is facilitated greatly by social media: with regard to
live performances as a part of protest movements, people all over the
world watch videos of these performances of the song on the inter-
net, and post comments of support for the movement. As an example,
the comments posted on the YouTube video of the Turkish rendition
of the song in Gezi Park reveal this international linking: comments
mainly in English but also in other languages come from people in
the United States, Spain, Britain, Egypt, Portugal, Canada, Italy, Brazil,
China, Korea, New Zealand and of course Turkey. The song has a role in
galvanizing international support, as the following comments show:

Hao Peng: The most touching version I’ve ever listened to. Saluting,
from New Zealand.
Victor Leal: This is beautiful. Such a difficult fight. Don’t give
up. We are fighting in Brazil as well. You guys are our brothers.

A collective transnational identity is apparent in comments linking

struggles in different parts of the world. The commonality of the music
highlights shared types of action and ideology. Thus communication
(both of ideas and interpersonal and group communication) based on
recognition of commonality occurs across linguistic, national, cultural,
geographical and contextual diversity.

Global Intercultural Communication across Time:

Multidirectional Memory
Singing a song from Les Misérables in all the different spaces and
contexts that have been mentioned is not only a phenomenon
of intercultural communication across space, but also across time,
since it links memories of past events and traditions from very
 Cosmopolitan Connective Memory 191

different temporal and geographical spheres as multidirectional memory

(Rothberg 2009).
The original song in the musical acts as a call to violent action in
the 1832 uprising in Paris. This uprising, a historical event experienced
by Victor Hugo, was motivated by revolutionary ideals of republican-
ism, democracy and the right to a decent life for all. The 1832 rebellion
recounted in Les Misérables clearly adopts the ideology of the prior, late
eighteenth-century revolutionary period. Although the musical genre
may present a rather simplified view of actual historical events, cer-
tainly the revolutionary sentiments are present, and powerfully evoked
by the narrative and stirring music. The year 1789 and its aftermath
became notorious for arbitrary violence and bloodshed symbolized by
the guillotine, but it was also a time of noble intellectual fervour
and innovation. Documents from the 1789–93 period include strong
early statements of the concept of universal human rights, which,
as we saw in Chapter 4, was an important source of inspiration for
the twentieth-century United Nations human rights declaration and
covenants that act as today’s international benchmarks. Nevertheless,
it seems that thinking about human rights has changed over time.
Whereas UN human rights documents mainly put emphasis on indi-
viduality, with typical formulations involving ‘everyone’ and ‘every
citizen’, late eighteenth-century documents speak of ‘le peuple’ (the peo-
ple), a strong collective group, as in article 25 of the 1793 Déclaration
des droits de l’homme et du citoyen [Declaration of the Rights of Man
and the Citizen]:

La souveraineté réside dans le peuple; elle est une et indivisible,

imprescriptible et inaliénable.
[Sovereignty resides in the people; it is one and indivisible, impre-
scriptible, and inalienable.]

All of the contemporary contexts where the song is sung are expressions
of collective will. This collective spirit fits perfectly with the French rev-
olutionary camaraderie and solidarity, which seem in fact to be more
appropriate to the protest movements than contemporary human rights
thinking.
Furthermore, contemporary UN documents are careful to insist on
peacefulness and do not mention the scenario of people being unhappy
with government action. In contrast, the 1793 French declaration details
how, if the people feel that their rights have been violated by the elected
192 Mapping Memory in Translation

government, they have the right and the duty to object by forceful
means:

Quand le gouvernement viole les droits du people, l’insurrection est,

pour le peuple et pour chaque portion du peuple, le plus sacré des
droits et le plus indispensable des devoirs. (article 35)
[When the government violates the rights of the people, insurrection
is for the people and for each sector of the people the most sacred of
rights and the most indispensable of duties.]

Our song enables multidirectional memory to function, as it links the

many different contemporary cases and contexts back to the French
revolutionary ideals, communicating across time and cultural spheres:
beneath the differences in the concrete details and cases, there are
shared trans-temporal philosophies of rights and justice.
What is created in effect are hybrid products: the song from Les
Misérables and its French revolutionary context remain present in the
new rendition of the song in a new contemporary context and some-
times new language. The fact that the music remains constant as well
as imagery and ideology in combination with change of context and
sometimes changes in the lyrics signals the hybrid relationship. Cer-
tainly the listeners and singers of the different versions will be aware of
such hybridity, since they are familiar with the English musical theatre
version. The striking visuality and emotion of the musical and its filmed
version mark the memory of the viewer with this famous period of
French history, particularly the passionate ideology of the uprising. The
audience of the musical Les Misérables, whose knowledge of French
history is not necessarily proficient, may sometimes believe that the
story concerns the famous 1789 French revolution rather than the 1832
uprising. In a way they are not wrong, since characters in the musi-
cal provide a passionate expression of the sentiments and beliefs of the
early revolution. Kraidy (2005, 151) finds that hybridity can empower
social groups to have influence over their lives through reinforcing
certain social, political and economic structures. In our case, linking
contemporary human rights issues to the prestigious past history and
intellectual achievements of the late eighteenth-century French revo-
lutionary period serves to reinforce the ideological message of people
today. In addition, the notional linking of all the different worldwide
performances of the song synchronically, combined with the common
diachronic link, provides a strong protestatory structure.
 Cosmopolitan Connective Memory 193

Global Intercultural Communication through Music and

Translation
The melody and rhythm of ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’ remain con-
stant across the different versions. The constancy of the music in all
versions constitutes an intercultural basis for shared emotions, for extra-
linguistic global intercultural communication. The song seems to call
forth various emotions: anger, excitement, strength of will, hope. For
David Treece (2015), a song has a core nuclear dynamic consisting of the
intimate link between music and semantics in key passages. The musical
style and rhythm of ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’ resemble those of
a march; coupled with appropriate lyrics, the whole lends itself to gal-
vanizing political mobilization in many potential contexts. Interlingual
translation contributes to this mobilization, since when people sing in
their native tongue they are better able to express strong feelings about
their local problems involving local identity. The source text for our
song is usually the English version from the musical, and this is com-
municated into different contexts around the world often by means
of translation, and sometimes involving adaptation of the lyrics, thus
hybridizing and localizing travelling memory (Erll 2011). We have seen
that four major vectors of global intercultural communication of the
song in protest contexts are space, time, music and translation. Let us
look in more detail at the mechanisms of this last category.

Translational Strategies

Franzon (2008) outlines how ‘song translation’ encompasses a num-

ber of different types of translation, where the primary factor shaping
what the translator does or should do consists in the specificities of the
context of performance or publication, including most importantly the
prospective use of the translation (cf. Nord 1997). Song lyrics may be
translated interlingually merely in order for the user to understand the
meaning of the original words, in which case a semantically close trans-
lation is undertaken. This is probably the case for subtitling on a video
clip, with the additional constraint of subtitle space restrictions. A gen-
erally more complex task is when the song is translated for the purpose
of performance, since there are important prosodic considerations of
fitting words to a specific melody and producing a song that flows natu-
rally in the target language, in other words the song translation must be
‘singable’. For Franzon (2008, 390), ‘singability’ is about a harmonious
match between music and text in three categories. The prosodic cat-
egory concerns questions of rhythm, syllable count, intonation, stress
194 Mapping Memory in Translation

and sounds for easy singing; the poetic category concerns rhyme, seg-
mentation of phrases, parallelism/contrast and location of key words;
and the semantic-reflexive category concerns the mood and emotion
conveyed, story told and images. Maintaining the same melody and
achieving singability often mean that the new translation lyrics do not
represent a close semantic equivalent of the original song words; rather,
certain semantic aspects of the lyrics that are accorded importance are
maintained. With regard to ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’, when the
song is sung outside the context of the musical as a part of protests,
both intralingual and interlingual translation quite often involve delib-
erate semantic changes in order to fit in with the new context. So the
skill of the lyricist/translator is required not only with regard to singa-
bility, but also in the adaptation of words to the new context. This
recontextualization makes the song all the more effective. It is a matter
of ‘communicative imagination’ (Pestana & Swartz 2008) where lan-
guage is employed in the service of creative democracy in these global
renditions.
Let us first consider cases of intralingual translation as adaptational
rewriting of the lyrics. This may concern simply one or two words,
but small changes can be significant for the impact of the song. The
Madison, Wisconsin protest referred to earlier regarding workers’ rights
was non-violent and took place in the Capitol building, so the mention
of barricades in the English original does not seem relevant. The word
‘barricade’ was cleverly replaced by ‘mascarade’, a highly appropriate
allusion in the context to political spin. Here are the words:

Original: Beyond the barricade, is there a world you long to see?

Madison, Wisconsin version: Beyond the mascarade, is there a world

you long to see?

In some cases more radical changes are made to the lyrics. This line in
the anti-McDonald’s Tecoma version becomes:

Tecoma version: Tear down the golden arches and restore democracy

With regard to our three English-language versions, the second line of

the song has been modified in each case to emphasize the all-important
collective identity of the group of protestors: the identity of Wisconsin
workers protesting against the governor’s bill that would have adverse
impacts on workers’ rights; the identity of Canadian young people wor-
rying about how climate change may affect their future; and the identity
 Cosmopolitan Connective Memory 195

of Tecoma inhabitants who do not want the charm and lifestyle of their
small town to be ruined by the arrival of corporate chains:

Original: Do you hear the people sing? Singing the song of angry
men

Madison, Wisconsin protest: Do you hear the people sing? Singing

the song of working men

British Columbia high school students: Do you hear the people sing?
Singing the song of angry youth
Tecoma inhabitants: Do you hear the people sing? Singing the song
of one small town

Comments on YouTube show that people are highly appreciative of the

new lyrics, which make the song powerful by speaking directly to the
issue at hand. Here is a comment regarding the Tecoma performance:

Flissy 611: Absolutely stunning. Beautiful lyrics sung with passion

and determination. Well done to everyone who participated.

In order to investigate strategies of adaptation to a new context with

regard to interlingual translation of the song, I undertook a detailed
study of a performance of the song in Taiwanese.

Study of the Taiwanese Version

This particular case was chosen because it is one of the most spectac-
ular street performances of the song due to its magnitude: more than
100,000 people sang the song together. Before examining the Taiwanese
translation of the song, some background information on the context
is needed. Taiwan has a long history of colonization starting with the
Dutch in the seventeenth century in the form of the Dutch East India
Company; then the Spanish, also seeking trading posts at that time;
the Chinese Qing dynasty for 212 years; and the Japanese from 1895
to 1945. From 1949 Taiwan was ruled by Chiang Kai-shek and his
followers of the Kuomintang (KMT) Party, who had lost in the con-
flict with the Communists and fled from mainland China. The KMT
mainlanders held power at all levels, rule of law was not respected,
and Taiwanese and other local languages were suppressed. Martial law
was not lifted until the late 1980s, leading the way to free presiden-
tial elections, the introduction of a democratic political system and
196 Mapping Memory in Translation

a certain ‘Taiwanization’ of society; that is, native Taiwanese assum-

ing high political posts and support of Taiwanese culture. Taiwan has
only had a multi-party democratic political system for about 20 years.
Although autonomous, Taiwan today is not an independent state; future
independence is supported by some Taiwanese political formations, but
strongly disapproved of by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The
low level of political freedom and civil rights in the PRC is in stark con-
trast to Taiwan, and the continued threat of the big neighbour makes
Taiwanese all the more attached to their democratic political system
(Manthorpe 2009). As a new democracy, the people are keen to fully
express their opinions, in particular with regard to government conduct
(Hsiao 2006, 72), and demonstrations are frequent. Most demonstra-
tions are peaceful, and at many demonstrations there are chanting and
theme songs.
The Taiwanese version of ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’ was cho-
sen as a theme song for a large-scale public demonstration that took
place on 3 August 2013. The aim of the demonstration was to call for
a serious investigation into the death of Corporal Hung Chung-Chiu
and to protest against the procedures of the military. Corporal Hung,
a young man undergoing his compulsory military service, had been
sent to solitary confinement and ordered to do exercises as punishment
for bringing a smartphone to camp. He had been forced to exercise
excessively, had been refused water, and died of multiple organ fail-
ure triggered by heatstroke (Fox News 2013). This was not an isolated
incident, as the army in Taiwan has a history of mistreating its ser-
vice men and women (TofBrownCoat 2013). Here a link is to be noted
between Hung and the character Jean Valjean in Les Misérables, who
also suffered a disproportionate punishment for his crime of stealing a
loaf of bread. Both the demonstration for Hung and Hugo’s novel were
forms of protest against unfair justice and penal/punishment systems,
as well as being concerned with democratic rights of expression and the
desire for a better society for ordinary people, for fair treatment of all
and for freedom from oppression. Singing a song from Les Misérables
in the demonstration brought memories of two very different societies
and histories together through their commonalities, and the Taiwanese
call for justice was enhanced by the reference to the famous novel and
to the past history of human rights in France. The demonstration for
Hung struck a chord in most Taiwanese families whose members had
also suffered at the hands of the military in the past (TofBrownCoat
2013). More than 100,000 Taiwanese took to the streets to protest near
 Cosmopolitan Connective Memory 197

the presidential office in Taipei (Fox News 2013). The logo of the rally
was a bleeding eye, which symbolizes ‘the eye of the citizens’ monitor-
ing the authorities (Li 2013). Videos were made of the demonstrators
holding placards of the logo and slogans, and singing the theme song;
these videos were posted on YouTube. The night-time images display a
peaceful demonstration, with the great mass of demonstrators singing
the Taiwanese version of ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’ passionately
and waving lit-up mobile phones in lieu of candles (Hung Protest 2013).7
Let us now examine some examples of the Taiwanese translator/lyricist’s
choices and strategies in order to see how they may have contributed to
the role of the song in the protest context.

Choice and Style of Language

The official language in Taiwan is Mandarin Chinese, which was first
instituted by the Kuomintang Party; it is the language of education and
is universally spoken. About 70 per cent of inhabitants are native speak-
ers of Taiwanese, which is a Chinese dialect. The translator/lyricist of our
song therefore had a choice to make, and he chose to translate the song
into Taiwanese. This choice could be interpreted as having a political
dimension, since the Taiwanese dialect has been associated with pro-
independence politics. My informants,8 however, were reluctant to link
the choice of Taiwanese directly to pro-independence politics in the con-
text of the Hung demonstration and its theme song. Rather, they agreed
that the choice of Taiwanese is an expression of local identity, relating to
the idea that this movement is about a local issue, and that the demon-
stration is a local way of reacting to it. When asked about the style of
language, the informants said that the Taiwanese in the song displays a
somewhat esoteric, metaphor-laden register, which is considered to be
the ideal for good-quality song texts. One informant called it ‘classic
Taiwanese’. The source text used by the translator was the English text,
which is in quite a simple style, as are many popular songs in English.
Shifting the register to an appropriate register in the Taiwanese context
displays an aspect of the translator/lyricist’s skill.

Explicitation, Implicitation and Substitution

As well as choice of language and style, particular translational strategies
contribute to the recontextualization of the song. Details of semantic
meaning are made explicit as adaptation to the new context. In the
Taiwanese version as compared to the English, the notion of collec-
tivity (collective feelings, experiences, aspirations and actions) is made
198 Mapping Memory in Translation

more explicit. Very often throughout their translation into English of

the Taiwanese text, my informants wrote the words ‘we’ or ‘our’, which
do not appear often in the English text. Here is the first line of the song:

EN: Do you hear the people sing?

TW:
Li Gam Wu Tiang Deu Nan E Guao
[Do you hear we sing?]

The Taiwanese lyricist emphasizes collectivity, since this is an important

aspect in the particular context of performance. Another example of
explicitation in the Taiwanese lyrics is the mention of ‘democracy’, sim-
ilarly to the Tecoma lyrics excerpt cited earlier. Again, the term responds
to the concerns of the Taiwanese people:

EN: Then join in the fight

That will give you the right to be free!

TW:
Nan Wi Ming Chu Wi Chu Yoo Gab Yi Biang Nan Muei Go Duan
[We won’t be alone while fighting for democracy and freedom]

As for implicitation or substitution, the main examples in the Taiwanese

version concern details that do not correspond with the Taiwanese
demonstration setting, such as the mention of barricades, similarly to
the Madison, Wisconsin case.

EN: Beyond the barricade

Is there a world you long to see?

TW:
Gyia Tou Kuan Tu Tinding Ji Lei Sei Gai Mandun Ma Mubaitiang
[Look up into the sky, have you ever imagined what a heaven
would be like?]

A most interesting case of substitution of one word relating to context

in terms of geographical place occurs with the mention of France in
the original song. In the English-language musical theatre context the
lyricist uses the word ‘France’ to remind the musical’s audience of the
story’s setting. Here is what happens in the Taiwanese version:

EN: The blood of the martyrs

Will water the meadows of France
 Cosmopolitan Connective Memory 199

TW: Formosa
Li E Hui Wo E Guan Ahle Di Formosa
[We sweat we bleed fighting for and irrigating our
homeland, Formosa]

In the Taiwanese context the song is not part of the musical, and
is being used to comment on human rights issues in Taiwan. There-
fore the translator/lyricist judges that it is not necessary to retain the
reference to France, and that it is appropriate to replace it with a ref-
erence to Taiwan. Formosa is another name for Taiwan, but why has
the translator/lyricist chosen Formosa? In questioning my informants
about this, I asked whether the choice might be related to the fact
that Formosa begins with the letter ‘F’, so could provide a link back
to the English version and the setting of France. This suggestion was
met with an expression of dubiousness. Similarly, it was not felt that
rhythm and rhyme were motivating factors for the choice. The most
likely motivation is the connotations of the name Formosa: it has very
positive connotations, as the name is in fact a compliment. It was given
to the island by Portuguese navigators in the sixteenth century, who
were impressed by the natural beauty of the island and called it ‘Ilha
Formosa’, ‘beautiful island’. One of my informants pointed out that the
name could also evoke a distant era of freedom, as the name was given
prior to the period of colonization by various colonizers since the sev-
enteenth century, explained previously. A long period of past hardship
and oppression is part of the cultural memory of the Taiwanese. The
connotation of freedom of ‘Formosa’ fits with the semantics of the song
and the protest context. In comparison, the name ‘Taiwan’ post-dates
colonization.

Metaphorization: Metaphorical Instead of Physical Violence

The video of the demonstration in Taiwan and singing of the song shows
clearly that this is a peaceful demonstration, and it was the will of the
organizers that it should be such. In contrast, the song in the musi-
cal is sung by the republican activists prior to violent combat with the
National Guard and troops. In the English version of our song there
are explicit references to physical combat, to imminent death for some
who will perish on the barricades, to ‘martyrs’. We will examine what
happens to these in the Taiwanese version.
As the excerpts quoted earlier including ‘barricades’ and ‘martyrs’
show, one strategy employed by the translator/lyricist was not to
reproduce such explicit references to physical combat or to death.
200 Mapping Memory in Translation

Another strategy is to use words that show less aggression, as in the

following:

EN: Singing the song of angry men

TW:
Chiung Chu Gan Ko Lan E Ko Tan
[Singing the pain people are suffering from]

It would seem that the main strategy of the Taiwanese translator/lyricist

is to write in such a way that it is clear that the sense of certain vocab-
ulary items expressing violence is metaphorical and not literal. One
informant assured me that the references in the Taiwanese version to
such notions as ‘slaves’, ‘crusade’, ‘fighting for’, ‘death’ and ‘bleeding’
are to be taken metaphorically in the context. Here is an example:

EN: So that our banner may advance

Some will fall and some will live
TW:
Tuang Geb I Sim Jeuhui Giang
[And hold the faith as we are one marching forward]

Mu Guang Hee Sin Yashi Woa Mian

[Be it life or death ahead]

In the Taiwanese text and in the song context, the phrase regarding
life and death does not refer to potential imminent death. Thus, the
translator/lyricist takes advantage of the slippage that language allows
from the physical to the metaphorical, in order to fit the words of the
song to its repurposing in a new context. My informant said that this
kind of metaphorical language is very important in Taiwanese songs in
order to express people’s strong feelings about issues.

We have seen cases of both intralingual and interlingual adaptation of

the song lyrics to fit effectively with a new context of performance,
including new political goals. It seems that just as transnational memory
has national inflections inevitably but also in some cases purposively,
as we saw in Chapter 5, so cosmopolitan connective memory is propa-
gated through multiple uptakes that share common features, but are at
the same time informed by very specific local contexts.

Translation Enabling Emotional Adherence

When I asked one of my informants what she thought of the Taiwanese
song, she said that it was ‘amazing’. She said that the lyrics were
 Cosmopolitan Connective Memory 201

admirable in achieving excellent style and singability: rhythm, rhyme,

intonation and stress according perfectly with the melody, quality of
the lyrics in accordance with Taiwanese stylistic norms of language and
register, and poetic and metaphorical elements that work well with the
melody to express emotions and meaning. In addition, the choice of
Taiwanese dialect links the song to local identity and local issues, and
the Taiwanese lyrics are chosen to equate well with the circumstances
of the non-violent manifestation by the people. The lyrics link to the
emotions evoked by the musical qualities to express the strong mes-
sages of the song in the particular context: a call for unity of the people
in supporting their cause, a call for the authorities to pay heed to the
people, and a call for rights, democracy, freedom and a better life in
their country. Thus the fitting combination of music and lyrics assures
illocutionary and performative force. These matters demonstrate that
interlingual song translation for performance requires a high degree of
sensitivity to language and context, as well as musicality. One infor-
mant told me that the translator/lyricist of the song, Dr Wu Yi-Cheng,
is an experienced lyricist and song writer in the Taiwanese dialect. It is
only because the song version is skilful that 100,000 Taiwanese people
wanted to sing it in the demonstration. It is the skilful translation in
their local language that combined with the music to enable the people’s
emotional adherence to the ideology of the words, motivating them
to sing the song with conviction. Similarly, regarding other cases men-
tioned earlier, it is choices and strategies at the micro-level of intra- and
interlingual translation that allow messages, ideologies and emotion to
be propagated and shared at both local and global levels.
The demonstration for Hung had useful practical outcomes. As a result
of the demonstration, the Taiwanese Minister of Defence resigned and
the Legislative Yuan approved major reforms to Taiwan’s military justice
system, including the transfer of military prosecutions during peace-
time to the civil judiciary (Chang 2013). It can be surmised that the
song translation allowing the empowering link between the world of Les
Misérables and the Taiwanese context; the qualities of the Taiwanese ver-
sion; and the passionate rendering by so many in the demonstration of
‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’ helped make the government listen and
thus enact the positive changes. In the other cases of protest mentioned
earlier, outcomes are unpredictable, various and not necessarily imme-
diate. Commenting on the remarkable pluralist and liberalist result of
the June 2015 national election in Turkey two years after the Gezi Park
protests, political scientist Ahmet Insel said: ‘the new Turkey of Gezi
Park has won’ (Letsch & Traynor 2015, 6). As for the Tecoma protesters,
they did not win the battle, since a McDonald’s outlet has since been
202 Mapping Memory in Translation

built in their town. However, they achieved a victory regarding a town

planning amendment that acknowledges the special character of the
region and will restrict the development of further drive-through sales
facilities in six local towns (Burgeroff Campaign). Our song is a small
part of protest movements, but it certainly has a role in galvanizing the
troops and reinforcing feelings of collective unity and will. In the words
of one YouTube commentator commenting on the Tecoma performance:

Geoffrey Graham: The power of song – aint it grand.

Translation of Cultural Products Facilitating the

Construction of Cosmopolitan Connective Memory and
Global Citizenship

Mobilizing an iconic cultural item creates strong visual, emotional and

sound appeal and impact. However, it seems that it is not only the uni-
versal appeal of the music, characters and narrative of Les Misérables
that has inspired the translation of the musical and its songs into mul-
tiple languages; it is also the possibility of ideological reinforcement
through hybridity. It should be said that just as academic historiogra-
phy has a restricted audience in terms of promotion of memory, so too
an abstract exposition of ideology in a treatise does not have the pop-
ular appeal and power of a cultural product such as a novel or musical.
My Taiwanese informants told me that it was particularly the filmed ver-
sion of the musical, enhanced by clips on the internet, that had made
Les Misérables well known in Taiwan. It was the population’s familiar-
ity with the song as well as its content that inspired the writing of
the Taiwanese version and its use as the demonstration theme song
(TofBrownCoat 2013). The translation of popular cultural products acts
as an effective form of global intercultural communication, diffusing
and linking up cultural forms and ideologies. In the contemporary world
connected by digital media, cultural products are very easily dissemi-
nated and reconfigured, thus hybridity is more and more the general
global condition (Bhabha 1994; Kraidy 2005). Such dissemination and
reconfiguration facilitate the construction of cosmopolitan connective
memory. The case of the Taiwanese and other versions of ‘Do You Hear
the People Sing?’ constitutes a small sample of how translation enhances
cosmopolitan connective memory, the shared knowledge facilitated by
digital communication of other people’s histories and cultural products
from around the globe, and the awareness of historical commonalities
between very different cases that are brought to the fore through the
 Cosmopolitan Connective Memory 203

mechanism of multidirectional memory. Imagine how the multiple

translations and adaptations through time and around the globe of Les
Misérables – books, films, musicals and so on – have created a great net-
work of cosmopolitan memory. Hugo specialist Bradley Stephens (2013)
indeed cites multiple examples of film adaptations linking Les Misérables
to various different historical periods and places: the US Great Depres-
sion, the US Civil War, World Wars I and II, and contemporary uprisings
such as the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement. Specific features
of the adaptations highlight the common themes such as injustice, suf-
fering, social problems, combats and struggles for rights. The memory
site of Les Misérables, in which interlingual translation participates, is at
once a site of perpetual creativity imbricating sameness with newness
(reminiscent of Bhabha’s ‘cultural translation’) and a site prompting
trans-temporal moral and social consciousness. Rather than achieving
in-depth historical knowledge, this is no doubt the ultimate goal of
cosmopolitan connective memory and identity.
Cosmopolitan or global identity has been investigated under the term
‘global citizenship’. Based on a thorough study of documentary refer-
ences and 157 interviews with individuals who had spoken of ‘global
citizenship’ in published statements, Schattle (2008) established core
concepts of global citizenship. The most central concept is ‘awareness’,
since it is a prerequisite for other concepts such as taking responsi-
bility and participative action. Components of ‘global awareness’ are
recognizing the shared fate of humanity due to global interdependence,
notably environmental and economic interdependence; openness to
different perspectives, but recognizing human commonality as more sig-
nificant than differences; and espousing the belief that there should be
universal standards of living and rights for all, and thus feeling empa-
thy to distant strangers just as to kin (Schattle 2008, 25–32). Global
awareness grows out of contact and communication, including global
cultural flows. For Appadurai (1996), five dimensions of global cul-
tural flows – ethnicity, media, technology, finance and ideas – are the
building blocks of imagined worlds, and through shared experiences
mass and digital media make possible ‘communities of sentiment’ or
affinity groups that may found imagined worlds, incorporating diverse
local experiences. In the case study we saw evidence of a global affin-
ity/solidarity group of rights protestors. Transnational affinity groups
can have varying moral compasses and similarly both digital commu-
nication technologies and translation can be used for different moral
purposes, such as forces for terrorist violence or forces for social justice.
The concept of global citizenship and the closely related philosophy
204 Mapping Memory in Translation

of cosmopolitanism favour the latter. These modes of thinking are no

doubt idealistic, since not only is violence part of the human psyche,
but rampant inequality in the world seems to be commonly accepted
such that some humans become expendable (Rose 2015; Irving 2015).
Nevertheless, hope for a more harmonious, equitable world is also part
of our psyche.
Critical cosmopolitanism is a philosophy that promotes connection,
as well as respect for difference and openness to change in all parties as
a result of intercultural encounters, a process that Delanty (2009) calls
‘cultural translation’. A cosmopolitan outlook is greatly reinforced by
consciousness of diachronic as well as synchronic dimensions, and, as
discussed, mass electronic communication has had the effect of mak-
ing group-specific memories available to a diverse world population,
enabling the constitution of shared global memory. Any feeling of
identity has a memory basis, whether autobiographical identity, group
identity or national identity, therefore identity as a ‘global citizen’ must
also have a memorial component, in this case cosmopolitan connective
memory. Misztal (2010, 41) affirms that ‘the creation of cosmopolitan
memory is an important step leading to post-nationalist solidaristic
political communities’. Translation and other forms of intercultural
communication contribute to constructing cosmopolitan connective
memory and therefore global citizenship as a possible identification
(combined with multiple others) for individuals, groups and even gov-
ernments and nations. Thus we may link the micro-level of the transla-
tion of phrases in popular cultural products to the macro-level of global
identities. In our times when overcoming selfish national interests and
achieving global co-operation to solve planetary problems are sorely
needed, conceptualizing and promoting the nexus of translation and
cosmopolitan connective memory are worthwhile enterprises.

We now come to the end of the substantive chapters and case stud-
ies, having travelled from the personal to the global. The discussion
has shown that translation and memory are inter-related at all levels
and in many different ways. This final chapter celebrates the power of
human connections across space and time enabled by trans-temporal,
intercultural, interlingual and electronic communication. A key mech-
anism in such communication is multidirectional memory, which
depends on the capacity for comparative and transformative thinking,
drawing on the vehicles of imagination, creativity and shared emotions,
aesthetics and aspirations.
 Cosmopolitan Connective Memory 205

Appendix 8.1: Lyrics

Do You Hear the People Sing?

For the original English lyrics see: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/
lesmiserablescast/doyouhearthepeoplesing.html

Taiwanese Version with English Gloss

Produced by my informants, reproduced with their permission.

Li Gam Wu Tiang Deu Nan E Guao

Do you hear we sing?

Chiung Chu Gan Ko Lan E Ko Tan

Singing the pain people are suffering from

Je Si Nan Mu Oun Ji Si Nan Jang Jeu No Ni E Sim Shiang

It is our wish that we don’t want to be slaves for our whole life

Nan E Sim Ding Dang Meio Diang Nan Ching Chung Yom Gam E
Go Shiang
Our hearts keep beating as if we are beating the drums fearlessly

M Moan Yu Ji Gan Wua Chu Juyo E Sin Si mian

Hoping that one day we will launch our new lives of freedom!

Chan Li Galib Oan E Gie Mian

Please join our crusade

Oan Mu Wan G Ja Giang Hyiang

We don’t want to live in panic any more

Gyia Tou Kuan Tu Tinding Ji Lei Sei Gai Mandun Ma Mubaitiang

Look up into the sky, have you ever imagined what a heaven
would be like?

Nan Wi Ming Chu Wi Chu Yoo Gab Yi Biang Nan Muei Go Duan
We won’t be alone while fighting for democracy and freedom
206 Mapping Memory in Translation

Li Gam Wu Qua Sim Hu Chu Ee Chei

Are you determined to give up everything

Tuang Geb I Sim Jeuhui Giang

And hold the faith as we are one marching forward

Mu Guang Hee Sin Yashi Woa Mian

Be it life or death ahead

Gen Chi Jeuo Nan E Heen Yang

We should stand on our dignity

Formosa
Li E Hui Wo E Guan Ahle Di Formosa
We sweat we bleed, fighting for and irrigating our homeland,
Formosa
Final Words

In this monograph my aim was to show how the fields of translation

studies and memory studies can be linked, and I have ambitiously
called the work a map of this endeavour. I defined memory as both
memory of past events and people, and practices passed down to us
from the past. Thus, one chapter was devoted to the topic of tra-
ditions. Various types of memory were delineated: personal memory,
group memory, electronic memory, textual memory, national memory,
transnational memory, institutional memory and cosmopolitan con-
nective memory. I stressed that these memory divisions are constructs,
but nevertheless have a basis in everyday thinking and experience, and
importantly support feelings of identity. Rather than being ‘distributed’
(Sutton et al. 2010), it was suggested that the different kinds of mem-
ory may be conceived as being in an intertwined relationship, whether
contributive to one another or mutually influencing. Among the various
concepts from memory studies that were explained in the Preface and in
Chapter 1, those that I have found the most useful in reflecting on trans-
lation and that have been referred to throughout this work are memory
archive and canon (Assmann 2010), remediation and memory site (Erll
2009), multidirectional memory (Rothberg 2009) and futuristic mem-
ory (Bickford & Sodaro 2010). This selection no doubt reflects my own
subjectivity with regard to value placed on the possibilities of cultural
dynamism, supra-national connections and life-long cultural learning.
In terms of translation, the starting point for discussions was
interlingual translation. I have shown how memory is essential for
interlingual translation, starting with the translator’s personal memory,
and conversely how translation plays a vital role for social mem-
ory in propagating memory across linguistic borders and creating
transnational memory sites. Interlingual translation naturally involves
or is combined with other senses of translation: the concepts of critical

207
208 Mapping Memory in Translation

processual translation and cultural translation with various definitions

have been used in this work. At times different senses of memory and
translation fuse. An example is the use of the term ‘cultural translation’
(Delanty 2009) to describe processes of critical cosmopolitanism involv-
ing mutual understanding and change with respect to others’ difference
constituted by traditions and cultural memory. Indeed, translation and
memory are inherently similar as they are both Janus-faced: looking
back into the past as well as forward into the future.
The detailed case studies in the monograph cover a range of contexts,
text types and languages in order to present practical illustrations of
how questions of memory can be explored in studies of translation.
A particular type of memory on which translation scholars might nat-
urally focus is textual memory. Retranslations of Zola’s Nana, and the
complex transformational reprises of earlier texts in the development of
(human) rights documents over centuries, demonstrate the concept of
textual memory. Discussion of the translation of Katherine Mansfield’s
short stories shows not only how the translation of a fictionalized auto-
biographical work influences the presentation of the author’s memory
construction, but also how the individual translator is caught in a web
of personal and other kinds of memory in undertaking a translation
task. With regard to group memory, the story of the differing Maori
and English versions of the Treaty of Waitangi shows how clinging to
memory of the translated version for a long period of many years was
essential in the Maori people making rights claims when the world envi-
ronment became conducive to hearing such claims. For groups, the
memory of founding documents, founders and founding ideology is
indeed important. Such is the case for translators today who characterize
their work as feminist, as they hark back to the early Québec femi-
nist translation pioneers. The same is true for more formal institutional
groups such as the in-house translators of the Directorate General for
Translation at the European Commission, who propagate the European
values and goals of the founding fathers through their large-scale pro-
duction of translations. When it comes to translation, national and
transnational memory seem to be closely inter-related, since translation
and more generally intercultural communication create transnational
knowledge, but often with national inflections. This is shown to be the
case with both translations of Walter Scott’s novels, and communica-
tions involving the Saudi CEDAW representation in which the conflict
between local conservative and transnational modernizing forces is
apparent. In several case studies I highlight the extraordinary capacities
and impact of advancing technological developments, such as machine
 Final Words 209

translation and contemporary electronic communication. These devel-

opments have been motors in global intercultural communication and
the possibility of cosmopolitan connective memory, exemplified in the
study of the worldwide translations and hybrid transformations of a
song from the musical Les Misérables performed in protest contexts.
My aim in the case studies has been to show how interlingual transla-
tion fits into and, although it may play a significant role, is generally just
one aspect of a complex textual, electronic, individual, social, cultural
and memorial context.
On an ethical level, although I cautioned that translation, mirror-
ing the human psyche, may be used for a range of moral and political
purposes, in the case studies I have shown how it can often be a
force for good in the world through contributing to the promotion of
human rights, including civil and political rights, cultural rights, indige-
nous people’s rights, women’s rights and the right to communicate.
The importance of dissemination and propagation through translation
has been emphasized, not only of fundamental texts such as political
treaties, charters of rights and the legislative texts of international orga-
nizations, but also of cultural products that have a part of the imaginary,
such as novels, films and songs, as they can be powerful memorial and
ideological vehicles. Global dissemination of texts and other cultural
products through translation and digital means allows the constitution
of a shared network of accumulated synchronic and diachronic narra-
tives and cultural memorial knowledge. Translation thus contributes
to the creation of transnational, institutional and cosmopolitan con-
nective memory, and to the potential construction of corresponding
transnational and global citizenship groupings and identities involving
shared knowledge and shared aspirations for humanity.
The original contributions of this monograph to the field of transla-
tion studies are to propose an overall framework for studying translation
and memory, and to show how a memory perspective and concepts may
shed light on a wide range of translational contexts. I aimed also to
make an original contribution to memory studies near the end of the
book, where it is posited that cosmopolitan connective memory shores
up identification as a global citizen. There are no doubt other ways in
which the notions and academic disciplines of memory and translation
can be fruitfully brought into contact, and it is to be hoped that other
researchers will exploit further the rich scope for the application of a
memory studies approach in researching a variety of types of translated
text, contexts and senses of translation.
Notes

2 Personal Memory
1. Mme Pellan is a retired university professor of English. I thank her warmly for
agreeing to do the interview, which took place on 23 October 2013.
2. For the purposes of this study in the page references ‘Bay’ refers to the original
text; C refers to Mme Pellan’s translation published in 2002; and B2 refers to
Marthe Duproix’s translation dating from 1929 and published with minor
revisions in 2006 (see the References under Mansfield for full publication
details).
3. See the References for the full bibliographical information for the translations
referred to here as A, B and C. All bold highlighting in the examples is mine.
4. ‘Prelude’ is close in content to an earlier, longer novella version entitled The
Aloe (1985 [1937]). This title signals the centrality of the symbolic plant in the
story.

4 Textual Memory
1. A related concept in translation studies is André Lefevere’s (1992) ‘rewriting’,
but this concept covers a narrower range of phenomena as compared with
the multiple genres and media covered by the term ‘remediation’. ‘Rewriting’
also has a different emphasis, as it more strongly connotes change, whereas
the emphasis for ‘remediation’ is on multiple reiteration. Another related con-
cept is Jakobson’s (1992 [1959], 145) ‘intersemiotic translation’, defined as ‘an
interpretation of verbal signs by means of non-verbal sign systems’. Again,
this describes a more restricted group of phenomena than ‘remediation’.
2. Mme Pellan provided an analogous example of the translator being called on
to provide a critical apparatus as literature studies specialist (see Chapter 2).
3. Recall, in contrast, how Mme Pellan says that she deliberately does not refer
to earlier translations when undertaking a retranslation (see Chapter 2).
4. My gloss of the source-text phrase or sentence is given in square brackets.
5. Note that Zola himself was an atheist.
6. Rights given in this document have been further elaborated in subsequent UN
treaties on civil and political rights, and economic, social and cultural rights.
7. For the complex details about these translations including uncertain author-
ship, see Marienstras and Wulf (1999).
8. One word has been changed for purposes of comprehensibility: ‘dispossessed’
has replaced ‘disseised’.

5 National and Transnational Memory

1. Auguste-Jean-Baptiste Defauconpret (1767–1843) was the principal translator
of Scott’s works into French.

210
 Notes 211

6 Traditions
1. The Shadow Report written by a group of clandestine Saudi women activists
is an unofficial report received by the CEDAW committee. It aims to
‘balance’ the official report submitted by the Saudi Arabian government
representation.
2. The series of documents studied belong to the most recent CEDAW review
for Saudi Arabia. It is to be noted that since 2007/08, a number of changes
have occurred with respect to women’s situation in Saudi Arabia, notably the
advances in 2013 mentioned in this chapter.
3. I would like to thank warmly my two Saudi informants for their contribution
to this study. The meeting took place in April 2014.
4. On the next page the report does say: ‘In Islam, a woman is not, in principle,
confined to the private domain’ (CEDAW 2007a, 12).
5. It is not known whether this is a quote from a published English translation
of the Qur’an.

7 Institutional Memory
1. Organization studies is a field of research that focuses on organizations,
defined as social units of people structured and managed in order to meet
a need or to pursue collective goals. The organizations studied cover both the
public and private sectors, and include educational establishments, not-for-
profit groups, government agencies and business entities. Thus, in the context
of this chapter ‘organizational’ is synonymous with my ‘institutional’.
2. Other EU institutions such as the Parliament and Council also have transla-
tion services, but they are smaller than the European Commission DGT.
3. I warmly thank the DGT French and English department and unit heads for
permitting me to visit and conduct interviews with translators for research
purposes, and I am very grateful to the translators interviewed for giving up
their time to talk to me.
4. Some translators mentioned the issue of differing levels of proficiency in their
various languages, which can present a challenge.
5. Here are the European Commission DG and Services titles: Agriculture
and Rural Development; Budget; Climate Action; Communication; Com-
munications, Content & Technology; Competition; Economic & Financial
Affairs; Education & Culture; Employment, Social Affairs & Inclusion; Energy;
Enlargement; Enterprise & Industry; Environment; EuropeAid Development
& Cooperation; Eurostat; Health & Consumers; Home Affairs; Humanitarian
Aid; Human Resources & Security; Informatics; Internal Market & Services;
Interpretation; Justice; Maritime Affairs & Fisheries; Mobility & Transport;
Regional Policy; Research & Innovation; Secretariat-General; Service for For-
eign Policy Instruments; Taxation & Customs Union; Trade; Translation (EC:
Directorates General & Services).
6. For revision, there are different levels of quality check. Level 1 requires a
very careful comparison of source text and translation; for Level 2 the reviser
will read the translation and check anything that seems odd. In some cases
revision is not required.
212 Notes

7. In January 2013, ‘deficit languages’ in the English department were Bulgarian,

Czech, Estonian, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish,
Romanian, Slovak and Slovene.
8. A similar scenario occurred when French was the dominant language, as one
of the English translators explained: ‘In the early days the same problem [lack
of clarity] happened with French when non-native speakers of French were
writing texts in French which we then translated.’

8 Cosmopolitan Connective Memory

1. Here are some examples of film clips of ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’ from
Les Misérables: 2013, with Portuguese subtitles, https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=PY65V-36pzc [accessed 3 October 2015]; 2013, with Thai subtitles,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SVoql-y8hk [accessed 6 August 2014].
2. Video of song rendition during Madison, Wisconsin, USA demonstration,
2011: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNsnbLqgLK0 [accessed 3 April
2015].
3. Video of song rendition at Tecoma, Australia protest, 2013: http://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=H7-0T1vbnWE [accessed 13 November 2014].
4. Video of song rendition in English and Turkish during Gezi Park demon-
stration, 2013: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGt0fsyTnRs [accessed
13 November 2014].
5. Video of song rendition in Taiwanese during Taipei demonstration, 2013:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xwuW7uIwPo [accessed 8 July 2014].
6. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.
7. Video of song rendition in Taiwanese during Taipei demonstration, 2013:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xwuW7uIwPo [accessed 8 July 2014].
8. In undertaking this study I consulted three Taiwanese MA Translation and
Interpreting Studies students of the University of Manchester, UK. They
provided an English translation of the Taiwanese version of the song (see
Appendix 8.1). I thank my informants warmly for participating in the
discussion of the Taiwanese song, which took place in July 2014.
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Index

affinity groups, 14, 73, 203 Erll, Astrid, 17–18, 46, 76, 108, 117,
agency, 13, 22, 28, 36, 49–50, 58–61, 178, 193, 207
63, 78, 130 European Union, 16, 151, 154–6, 173
Appadurai, Arjun, 190, 203 Directorate General for Translation
Assmann, Aleida, 11, 17, 76, 182, 207 of the European Commission,
16, 49, 154–81, 208
Baker, Mona, 21, 95, 127
Bassnett, Susan, 8 Flotow, Luise von, 62–65
Benjamin, Walter, 2, 7–8, 23, 77 forgetting, 7, 11–12, 23–4, 31, 77, 81,
Bhabha, Homi, 4, 202–3 102, 124, 185
Brodzki, Bella, 2–3, 7–8, 23, 78 French Revolution, 91–2, 100–1,
191–2
Freud, Sigmund, 6, 38
Canadian feminist translators, 14,
62–9, 71–3
global citizenship, 183, 202–4, 209
censorship, 11, 79–87, 116
communities of practice, 49
Halbwachs, Maurice, 9, 14, 20, 34,
Convention for the Elimination of
47–8, 153
Discrimination against Women
history, 2, 5, 10, 12, 21, 75, 108, 114,
(CEDAW), 100, 131–49, 208
127, 179, 183–6
Conway, Martin, 13, 19–20, 23–5
eighteenth century, 91–102, 113,
cosmopolitanism, 4, 183, 204, 208
115, 191–2, 196
countries, 73, 92, 108, 111–25, 127–8,
historical documents, 14, 76–8,
131–3, 145, 167–74, 183, 187
89–105, 109
Canada, 14, 62–9, 71–3, 118, 121,
historical novel, 15, 109–25, 185
128, 131, 190, 194
medieval, 90–3, 102, 109–13, 115,
England, 22, 78, 90–102, 109–21,
117, 120
128, 167–9
nineteenth century, 6, 79, 86–7,
English-speaking, 93, 118, 124, 167 100, 109–10, 115–19, 126–8,
France, 9, 17, 31, 78, 79, 92–102, 186
111–19, 169, 185–99 sixteenth & seventeenth centuries,
New Zealand, viii–xiii, 22–39, 107, 90–7, 115, 119, 128, 195–99
118, 190 twentieth century, xi, 6, 16, 53, 96,
Saudi Arabia, 16, 126–48 99, 116, 151, 155–6, 195–6
Scotland, 90–102, 109–18, 169 Holocaust, 6–7, 15, 17, 37–8, 183
Spain, 66–70, 111, 116, 190 Hoskins, Andrew, 17, 179, 182,
Taiwan, xiv, 185, 188–9, 195–202 Hugo, Victor, 186–7, 191, 196, 203
Turkey, 71, 127, 188–90, 201 human rights, 89–104, 107, 109,
Cubitt, Geoffrey, 19, 21, 38, 47–8, 106 128–31, 176, 183, 188–99
civil and political, xi–xiv, 92, 209,
Deane-Cox, Sharon, 6–7, 9, 37–9 210
Delanty, Gerard, 4, 183, 204, 208 cultural, xii–xiv, 131, 209, 210
Dijck, José van, 17, 20, 26, 50 freedom of speech, 82

226
 Index 227

indigenous people’s, xi–xiv futuristic memory, xiii, 156, 183,

women’s, xiv, 16, 63, 131–49, 209 207
memory site, 18, 76–7, 79, 88–9,
ideology, 67–70, 81–2, 94, 113, 151, 101, 104, 117, 124, 178, 203,
174, 190–2, 201–2 207
intercultural communication, 144–50, multidirectional memory, 15, 17,
182–93 108, 114, 154, 183–5, 190, 192,
adaptation, 110–23, 183, 187–203 203–4, 207
competence, 129, 146–9 past-present dialectic, 13, 87, 94
in conflict, xii, 128–9, 136, 144–6, prosthetic memory, 9, 184
149–50 remediation, 17–18, 76–7, 79, 88,
global, 182–93, 202–4 104, 109, 117–18, 124, 178, 207
miscommunication, 130, 135, 140, secondary witness, 6, 7, 37–9
143, 147–9 memory types, 13
interpreting, 5, 19, 127–8, 134, 149, autobiographical, 3, 13, 19–26, 29,
158, 181 31, 33, 38, 46, 153, 158, 179,
Ivanhoe, 109, 112–4, 116–24 180
collective, x, 9, 35, 47, 106, 111,
Katan, David, 129–30, 134, 146, 149 118–19, 152, 154–5, 157, 179
cosmopolitan connective, 17, 154,
Landsberg, Alison, 9, 184 183, 185, 188, 200, 202–4
languages, xiii, xiv, 1–3, electronic, 10–11, 14, 18, 47, 50–62,
Arabic, 16, 48, 73, 127, 134–44, 73, 108, 153–4, 161–4, 179, 182
146–9 group, 14, 47–8, 51, 153, 166, 179
French, 7, 9, 12, 26–45, 62–70, institutional, 16, 147, 151–5, 161,
79–88, 89–101, 111–23, 134, 171–180
155, 157–78, 187 national, 15, 106–9, 119, 123,
Latin, 48, 89, 90, 93–4, 96, 102–4 125–6, 153–4, 169, 173, 180,
Maori, viii-xiv, 35–6, 208 200
Taiwanese, 195–202, 205–6 personal, 7, 13, 18, 19–22, 26–37,
Les misérables, 17, 186–7, 190–2, 196, 46, 153, 158–62, 179
201–3 textual, 14, 32, 75, 77–105, 108,
Levy, Daniel & Natan Sznaider, 17, 114, 157, 165–6, 168, 179
107, 183 transnational, 15–16, 106–10,
literary translation, 30, 36–7, 39–46, 112–14, 123–5, 153–4, 169,
57, 64, 66–8, 70–73, 78–89, 183–5, 200
111–24
Nana, 14, 78–89, 104, 109, 208
Mansfield, Katherine, 13, 21–46, 75, narrative, 11, 15, 21, 23–5, 35, 79,
208 106–7, 110, 117, 119, 124, 179,
memory concepts, xiv–v, 1, 5, 9, 12, 183, 185–7
14, 77, 108, 179, 207–9 Nora, Pierre, 18, 76
archive and canon, xi, 11, 17–18, Nord, Christiane, 193
67, 76, 78, 94, 149, 207
collective and collected memory, 9, Olick, Jeffrey, 9, 15, 47, 107, 152,
47, 119, 152, 155, 157–8, 179 158
counter-memory, 107
distributed memory, 13, 20, 26, 31, Pellan, Françoise, 19–20, 26–37
46, 153, 182 popular culture, 183–6
228 Index

proz.com, 14, 51–62, 73 translation history, 16, 127–8, 156

Pym, Anthony, 129–30, 147, 149 translation norms, 34, 36, 49, 67, 78,
84, 87, 147, 151, 172, 180
retranslations, 14, 69, 78–89, 94, 104, translation strategies, 51, 62–74, 130,
208 147
Rigney, Ann, 79, 84, 110–11, 117–20, translation technologies, 50–4, 61–2,
124, 183–4 162–5
Rose, Marilyn Gaddis, 39 machine translation, 11, 14, 53–4,
Rothberg, Michael, 15, 17, 77, 108, 57–61, 73, 164
114, 183–4, 191, 207 translation memory tools, 11, 53–7,
73, 75, 161–5
Sakai, Naoki, 1–2, 10 translator testimonies, 26–37, 157–181
Scott, Walter, 15, 109–25, 184, 208 translation types, 1
Simon, Sherry, 1, 10–12 critical processual, 2–3, 4, 7, 105,
song translation, 193–202 208
Sutton, John, 18, 26, 153, 207 cultural, ix, 3–5, 105, 130, 146,
203–4, 208
textual co-construction, 13, 37–46
feminist, 51, 62–75, 208
tradition, 1, 4, 15–16, 76, 100–1,
interlingual, xiv, 1–3, 14, 16, 26, 77,
106–7, 113, 119, 126–50, 183–6,
89–105, 110–25, 128, 149, 186,
190
193–5, 201–3
indigenous, ix, xi, 8, 36
intralingual, 89, 100, 128, 194
invention of, 95, 117, 126
Treaty of Waitangi, viii–xiv, 107,
linguistic and literary, 10–12, 62,
208
100, 115, 119, 167, 171
Tymoczko, Maria, 3, 127, 128, 130,
religious, 14, 16, 47, 82–7, 95, 112,
147
116, 127, 132–48
of rights, 91–2, 99–103
rival, 130, 148 Wenger, Etienne, 49–50, 52, 64, 73
translating for international
organizations, xiv, 16, 133–4, Zola, Emile, 14, 76, 78, 79–82, 84, 94,
147–8, 154–81, 209 104, 184, 208