Constructing a Sociology of Translation.pdf

17Andrew Chestermanpeople and their observable actions. Sociological issues of translation have beenraised earlier by both translation scholars (see e.g. Lefevere 1992; Hermans 1999;Wolf 2002) and sociologists (see e.g. Heilbron and Sapiro 2002).Although these four areas of translation studies can thus be roughly separated,there is of course much research that cannot be carried out within one approachonly, and overlaps are common. As will be illustrated below, overlaps and bridgescan in fact be significant, in that they explicitly make links between different perspectives.The first bridge concept discussed here is the notion of causality.CausalityI have elsewhere (e.g. 2000) suggested that translation studies makes use of threekinds of models of translation: comparative models, process models and causalmodels. These can be related to our four main perspectives as follows.Comparative models are on the textual level. They model translation first as arelation between two texts, source and target. Central concepts are those of equivalence(or similarity) and shifts. Later versions of this model relate translations toparallel non-translated texts in the target language (cf. corpus research).Process models have been proposed for the cognitive level, Toury’s translationact. They show input to and output from the black box, and the flow betweenvarious assumed modules in the decision-making process. Process models havealso been proposed for the sociological level, specifying the various phases in theobservable translation process from the initiation by the client, via preparation,drafting and revision, to the final payment (e.g. Sager 1993).Causal models aim to show cause and effect relations, not just temporal sequences.On one hand, translations are seen as caused or influenced by variouscausal conditions; and on the other hand, translations themselves are causes ofeffects, such as quality judgements by clients or readers, as mentioned above (seee.g. Chesterman 2000).Some process models might be called implicitly causal, for they obviously assumea causal relationship between the process and the final product. InternationalISO, DIN and most recently CEN standards, for instance, specify aspectsof the translation process in great detail, on the assumption that if the variousphases are carried out “correctly” the final product will be of “acceptable quality”,according to these standards.Explicit causal models have been proposed to link all four levels, and theyare the most relevant model type for the topic of this paper. Causal models relatetextual features of translations to some features outside the translation. These featuresare either assumed to be causal conditions or subsequent effects. Different