Constructing a Sociology of Translation.pdf

20 Michaela Wolfthat over the centuries the translatorial habitus has contributed to the internalisationof a submissive behaviour, thus generating low social prestige for translators.As a result of the continuous, historically conditioned acceptance of norms bytranslators, Simeoni argues, the translators’ willingness to accept these norms hassignificantly contributed to the secondariness of their activity (ibid.: 6). He stressesthe key role of this internalized position in the “field of translation”. Simeonitries to integrate the category of the translatorial habitus into systemic translationmodels, not least by reframing Toury’s concept of norms “on the assumption ofa translating habitus understood as: (culturally) pre-structured and structuringagents mediating cultural artefacts in the course of transfer” (ibid.: 1). Ultimately,a habitus-led consideration of translation practices would encourage more finelygrainedanalyses of the “socio-cognitive emergence of translating skills and theiroutcome”.The question of the translator’s alleged subservience is also discussed by MoiraInghilleri. On the basis of Bourdieu’s concepts of field and habitus, as well asBasil Bernstein’s theory of pedagogic discourse, Inghilleri elaborates a theoreticalframework for the analysis of community interpreting as a norm-driven activity(Inghilleri 2003). With this framework Inghilleri proposes not only to reveal theconstructivist nature of norms, but also to analyse the principles which generatethe practice of public service interpreting in its various contexts. She paysspecial attention to reconstructing the interpreters’ habitus, which Inghilleri isnot willing to locate within the subordination of the translators’ and interpreters’activity under norm systems. She points instead to the interplay of the distinctive,conflictual and contradictory habitus of the agents participating in the processof community interpreting, which eventually make up the dynamics of the interpretingsituation and have the potential to change existing social relationshipsand social practices. In another paper, Inghilleri further explores the interpretinghabitus. She first investigates the phenomenon of interpreting in the political asylumapplication procedure adopting ethnographic questions which address the“representation of the other” 16 in interpreting. She then stresses Bourdieu’s idea ofthe “zones of uncertainty in social space” where problematic gaps are opened upbetween individual expectation and actual experience (Inghilleri 2005a: 70). Thediscordance evident within these zones, however, creates the potential for agentsto redefine their role, thus enabling a change “from within”. This also entails achange of the interpreting habitus, generating new forms of interpreting practices.In her introduction to the special issue of The Translator “Bourdieu and theSociology of Translation and Interpreting”, Inghilleri discusses the ethnographic1. For the relationship between “representation techniques” in translation and ethnographicmethodologies, see also Agorni, in this volume.