post-colonial_translation

76 André Lefevere
An educated member of any culture in the West, for instance (as we
might describe someone who has more or less successfully survived the
socialization process), will know that certain texts are supposed to
contain certain markers designed to elicit certain reactions on the
reader’s part, and that the success of communication depends on both
the writer and the reader of the text agreeing to play their assigned parts
in connection with those markers. The writer is supposed to put them
in, the reader is supposed to recognize them. Texts that start with ‘Once
upon a time’, for instance, will elicit quite different expectations in the
reader than texts that start with ‘Leave Barcelona 8:15 a.m.; Arrive
Amsterdam 11.30 a.m’. In the first case readers are not supposed to
worry about the referential nature of the text in question. In the second
case they would be justifiably upset if they were to be met at the Barcelona
airport by a wizard in flowing robes telling them he has unfortunately
not been successful, yet, in conjuring up a flight for them, but that he
will keep working on it, and would they be so kind as to take a seat and
be patient. I might be accused of a sleight of hand at this point: am I not
ignoring the utter complexities of many postmodern texts, which
contain many more markers than the ‘Once upon a time’ type By no
means; indeed, postmodern texts furnish probably the strongest proof
for my contention: one can only understand and appreciate fragments
and collages when one is familiar with the wholes those fragments are
taken from, and with the way either the fragments, or the wholes, or
both, are played off against each other. There are more and more
markers, but they are still supposed to work. One might even take a
step further and say they only work among those who are more or less
professional readers of texts, since these alone are likely to recognize
and appreciate most of the markers in the text.
Similarly, an educated member of any culture in the West will know,
after having gone to school and / or university, and after graduating
from television, what kind of subject matter can be treated without too
many problems, and what kind of subject matter is likely to be more
controversial. Murder, for instance, is a safe subject to be treated in any
art form in the USA at present. Abortion is not.
Problems in translating are caused at least as much by discrepancies
in conceptual and textual grids as by discrepancies in languages. This
fact, which may be obscured to some extent in the process of translating
between languages that belong to Western cultures (and most thinking
and writing on translation, having been done in the West, relies on this
kind of translating), becomes blatantly obvious when we are faced with
the problem of translating texts from Western to non-Western cultures,