2021-04-27 11th Lecturer - Translation and Cultural issues.pptx

1. Translation and Cultural issues
Presented by
Dr. Nighat Ahmed
Department of English (UGS)
NUML, Islamabad
BS-English (Afternoon)
Course = Introduction to
Translation Studies
7th Semester
Section A,B & C
Semester : Spring 2021
11th Lecture (Online)

2. The Cultural turn
‘Cultural turn’ is a term used in translation studies for the
move towards the analysis of translation from a cultural
studies angle.
Suran Bassnett and André Lefevere (1990) in their
collection of essays ‘Translation, History and Culture’
dismiss the earlier linguistic theories of translation and the
painstaking comparisons between original and translation
which do not consider the text in its cultural environment.
Instead Bassnet and Lefevere go beyond language and
focus on the interaction between translation and culture,
on the way culture impacts and constrains translation on
‘the larger issues of context, history and convention.’

3. Thus the move from translation as text to translation as
culture and politics is what Mary Snell Hornby (1990) in
her paper terms ‘the cultural turn.’ Bassnett and Lefevere
take this concept in their case studies in their collection,
which includes studies of changing standards in translation
overtime, in specific ideologies, feminist, writing and
translation as ‘appropriation’, translation and colonization
and translation as rewriting including film rewriters.
The following three major areas where cultural studies
have influenced translation studies during 1990’s will be
discussed in detail:
1. Translation as rewriting.
2. Translation an gender.
3. Translation as postcolonialism

4. Translation as rewriting
Andre Lefevere’s work in Translation Studies developed
out of his strong links with the polysystem theory. Though
his later work on translation and culture in many ways
represents a bridging point to the cultural turn. This is
presented in his book ‘Translation, Rewriting and the
Manipulation of Literary Fame’ (1992).
Lefevere focuses on the examination of ‘very concrete
factors’ that govern the reception, acceptance or rejection
of literary texts, that is ‘issues such as power, ideology,
institution and manipulation’.

5. The people involved in such power positions are the ones
Lefevere sees as ‘rewriting’ literature and governing its
consumption by the general public. The motivation for
such rewriting can be ideological (conforming to or
rebelling against the dominant ideology) or poetological
(conforming to or rebelling against the
dominant/preferred poetics). Here pertinent example is of
Edward Fitzgerald (the 19 century translator or rewriter)
of the Persian Poet Omar Khayyam. Fitzgerald
considered Persians inferior and felt he should ‘take
liberties’ in the translation in order to ‘improve’ on the
original, at the same time making it conform to the
expected Western literary conventions of his time.