Constructing a Sociology of Translation.pdf

2Theo Hermanscurrently up to seventy years after the author’s death. When copyright expires,the free-for-all resumes. In this way copyright law serves as a reminder that theuntranslatability I mentioned above is rolled out over time. It can be held up for awhile, for a century or so, but is unstoppable in the longer term, as each translationharbours the potential for retranslations. Put differently: as translation remainsforever repeatable and provisional, every particular rendering potentializesothers. In the same way the choices made in individual translations merely temporalizethe excluded alternatives; it puts them on a reserve list.Social systemsIn talking of things like copyright law and temporalization, social and historicalhorizons come into view. What does translation look like if viewed as a socialpractice? To pick one paradigm from among several on offer, what would translationlook like if viewed through a social systems lens, the type of lens that hasbeen ground and polished by Niklas Luhmann in particular?Translators would not be part of such a system. They would be presupposed,as would be all sorts of material preconditions. Here we encounter the translator’ssecond disappearance. In social systems theory, translators are not part ofany social system because, like other human beings, they are composed of mindsand bodies, and neither minds nor bodies are social. Systems theory as Luhmanndeveloped it 1 conceives of minds as psychic systems and of bodies as biologicalsystems. The human body is encased within its owner’s skin, and that is its outerlimit. The body needs the outside world because it must take in air and food, butits functioning is an internal matter. In the same way the mind needs sense perceptionsbut then goes on to process thoughts and feelings in its own way. Thisprocessing is again an internal matter, just as digestion is internal to the body.Another way of putting this is to say that both minds and bodies function autonomously.Cells reproduce; thoughts feed on thoughts and trigger further thoughts.None of these processes are social. Minds cannot reach into other minds or transmitthoughts. I cannot read your mind and you cannot read mine.What we can do is communicate. If we think of what it is that makes the socialsocial, we end up with what happens not within but between persons. That is whyLuhmann defines social systems as systems consisting of communications. Communicationrequires thoughtful minds, talking heads and functioning bodies, butits social nature comes to the fore when it happens in the sphere of the inter-1. All Luhmann’s major works outline the ideas on which the following paragraphs are based.The most relevant titles are listed in the bibliography.