Constructing a Sociology of Translation.pdf

Constructing the professional field of translation 7for translations increases, but also the need for greater specialisation and for cooperationwith the other agents in the communicative act. This greater degree ofdemocracy can have both a horizontal and a vertical effect. Horizontally, it affectsthe power balance between cultures and vertically, the access to transcultural informationflows for a wider range of people. The process of horizontal democratisationis reinforced by the ideological and politically motivated re-evaluation ofsome languages which become symbolic vehicles for ethnic and national identityaffirmation. A current example is the elevation of the official languages of the newEU member states to the status of official languages of the European Union.The vertical democratisation of transcultural communication can be achievedwith an old or new lingua franca, if limited financial resources make this necessary.However, the use of a lingua franca can be subject to – occasionally completelyunexpected – functional restrictions. Immediately after the disintegrationof the Soviet Union, Russian ceased to be a lingua franca, for both ideologicaland psychological reasons. At the same time, the seemingly unstoppable rise ofEnglish was slowed down when the internet, the most international of all media,started to use regional languages. This new competition forced the internationalcompanies to adapt their language and culture to the needs of the consumers. Evidencefor this development is the rapidly growing number of bi- and multilingualwebsites.The internet is the most recent medium for transcultural communication.Its technical parameters determine its extent and structure. Before the developmentof writing, translation as a special type of transcultural communication occurredonly in the here and now of the communicative act. As writing emergedand made available a complex symbolic system that allowed the recording of languageon more permanent media, and as communication beyond the confines ofinterpersonal encounters became possible and the constraints of space and timewere overcome, we also see a differentiation of translational activity into translatingand interpreting. Interpreting was the translational activity that was still tiedto the spatio-temporal context in which the communicative act was performed,while translators produced artefacts that could be recontextualised in an endlesschain of meaning construction. The consequence is that the durability of translationsand interpretations differs.The situative and social coordinates of interpreting did not change, in theoryuntil the invention of the sonograph, in actual fact until the arrival of the media ofmass communication. Translation, by contrast, developed along with the mediathat were available for the dissemination of texts, and was subject to technical,social and economic constraints. Access to texts on stone, parchment and paperwas limited and the prerogative of the rich and powerful. Writing and readingand, thus, also the production and dissemination of translations were limited to