Constructing a Sociology of Translation.pdf
Constructing a Sociology of Translation.pdf
Constructing a Sociology of Translation.pdf
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Outline for a sociology <strong>of</strong> translation 95Transcending a merely inter-textual problematic that is centered on the relationbetween an original and its translation leads to a series <strong>of</strong> specifically sociologicalquestions about the stakes and functions <strong>of</strong> translations, their agenciesand agents, the space in which they are situated and the constraints, both politicaland economic, that circumscribe them. A sociological approach to translationmust therefore take into account several aspects <strong>of</strong> the conditions <strong>of</strong> transnationalcirculation <strong>of</strong> cultural goods: firstly, the structure <strong>of</strong> the field <strong>of</strong> international culturalexchanges; secondly, the type <strong>of</strong> constraints – political and economic – thatinfluence these exchanges; and thirdly, the agents <strong>of</strong> intermediation and the processes<strong>of</strong> importing and receiving in the recipient country (Heilbron and Sapiro2002a, 2002b).The international fieldConsidered as a transnational transfer, translation first presupposes a space <strong>of</strong> internationalrelations, this space being constituted by the existence <strong>of</strong> nation-statesand linguistic groups linked to each other by relations <strong>of</strong> competition and rivalry.The sociology <strong>of</strong> translation can thus be inscribed more generally within the programproposed by Pierre Bourdieu (2002) on the social conditions <strong>of</strong> the internationalcirculation <strong>of</strong> cultural goods. To understand the act <strong>of</strong> translating, oneshould in a first stage analyse it as embedded within the power relations amongnational states and their languages. These power relations are <strong>of</strong> three types – political,economic and cultural – the latter split into two aspects: the power relationsbetween linguistic communities as assessed by the number <strong>of</strong> primary andsecondary speakers (de Swaan 1993, 2001), and the symbolic capital accumulatedby different countries within the relevant field <strong>of</strong> cultural production (Casanova1999). In these power relations, the means <strong>of</strong> political, economic and culturalstruggles are unequally distributed. Cultural exchanges are therefore unequal exchangesthat express relations <strong>of</strong> domination. In accordance with these analyses,the flows <strong>of</strong> translations should then be re-situated in a transnational field characterizedby the power relations among national states, their languages, and theirliteratures.The global system <strong>of</strong> translations may be described as a set <strong>of</strong> highly hierarchizedrelations whose functioning demonstrates several general mechanisms(Heilbron 1999; Heilbron, de Nooy and Tichelaar 1995). Drawing on statisticaldata concerning the international market for translated books (acknowledgingthat the data suffer from various deficiencies; Pym 1998: 72), the structure <strong>of</strong>these exchanges can be described in a general way. Crudely speaking, since halfthe books translated worldwide are translations from English, English occupies