Constructing a Sociology of Translation.pdf

Outline for a sociology of translation 101author’s right from American copyright legislation, which considers the book asa commercial good like any other. Having refused to sign the paragraph on moralrights in the international convention, the United States has still managed to imposeits exclusion from the TRIPS agreements adopted within the WTO.The agents of intermediation and the dynamics of receptionInternational cultural exchanges are organized by means of institutions and individualagents, each arising from different political, economic and cultural dynamics.The process of cultural construction of national identities (Thiesse 1999),closely linked to the formation of nation-states and to the competition amongthem within their spheres of influence, implied a regulation of diplomatic andcultural exchanges, which were delegated to a set of authorities (embassies, culturalinstitutes, translation institutes, journals launched to present a national literatureabroad, etc.). The creation of law on authorship, the droit d’auteur, in theeighteenth century aimed to protect the French book market from foreign counterfeits.The industrialization of the book market, the growth in readership thanksto literacy, and the liberalization of cultural exchanges, all favored the emergenceof groups of agents specialized in the trade in translated books: independent publishinghouses with foreign rights departments, literary agents, international bookfairs. The development of the market of cultural goods and the liberalization ofexchanges in this latter period have marginalized state authorities, which haverenounced their own export circuits in order to participate in the organizationof commercial exchanges: national institutes supporting translation such as theFoundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature (NLPVF) orthe Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature increasingly behave likeliterary agents. Foreign policy representatives in charge with the promotion ofnational cultures abroad also work increasingly with agents in the market (publishersand literary agents), and local authorities may take part in the organizationof book fairs, as is the case with the Jerusalem Fair. At the same time, official decision-makingpower is greatly reduced, and publishers do not hesitate to bypassthese official intermediaries to take the advice of agents in the literary field of thecountry of origin, such as authors, critics or academics.In fact, apart from these specialists of intermediation, literary exchangesalso depend on a set of specific agents in the literary or scientific field (authors,translators, critics, academics, and scholars, for whom work founded on linguisticand social resources procures specific benefits). These interrelations would lendthemselves to network analysis (Wasserman and Faust 1994). The conditions ofimporting US-American science fiction after the Second World War well illus-