Constructing a Sociology of Translation.pdf

Constructing the professional field of translation 51lieved to have the power to create unique intellectual products. The God-Authorand the authorised Word of God were replaced by the Author-God, as RolandBarthes called him, not without irony (Barthes 1977: 146). The task of the translatorconsequently was to copy this unique intellectual product. Schleiermacher’sconcept of alienation added a further dimension. Here literalness also paves theway to the otherness of the other which is reflected in the linguistic habitus (Berman1992).There was little change with regard to the social position and power of translators,however. Having adopted the habitus of the servant and invisible communicatorthey had ended up in a situation from which there was no way out. The statusof the Author-God derived not only from his intellectual genius but also fromthe positive formulation of the concept of intellectual property. While authorseventually, in the nineteenth century, won the ideological, social and legal battlefor the sole rights to their texts, the translators clearly lacked the social backing,as well as the cultural and symbolic capital and even more so the financial capital,that would have allowed them to secure the right to be an equal partner in thesignification process. They were under political, ideological and financial pressurefrom clients and publishers, and also had to battle against the monopolisationof interpretations. While in the past it was the church that controlled the interpretationof texts, in the secularised world this control is exerted by the new andprofessional exegetes in translator-mediated interactions who claim this interpretivemonopoly for themselves: the hermeneutists for fictional and philosophicaltexts, lawyers for legal texts, therapists in therapeutical sessions etc. What they allhave in common is that they believe in the identity of the word and truth and thattransparent transcoding will give them access to the meaning of texts.Although it is precisely this belief in the identity of the word and truth whichis cast into doubt in our post-modern world, while the notion of the interpretiveopenness of the text is generally accepted, translators still hide behind theillusion of objectivity. This leads to an almost schizophrenic constellation of selfconstructedtranslator identities which combine the pariah habitus and the selfsacrifice and self-mutilation demanded by others.This may also explain why translators who are involved in the creation oftextual worlds, of meaning and value constructions, are loathe to admit their creativeinvolvement in the current codes of ethics. Neither their other nor their selfconstruedidentities allow translators to overcome the habitus of the servant so asto self-confidently confront the circle of social meaning and value constructions.This brief overview of the history of translation theory and translation shows thatdue to the underlying socio-historical restrictions translators hardly ever succeededin overcoming their self-construed or imposed pariah status and orientatingthemselves by historical configurations, metaphors and personalities in their