Reconceptualizing the foreignizing and domesticating literary translation of the Arab culture(s)

Performing Translation in Contemporary Anglo-American Drama Jenny Spencer (bio) There can be no operative notion of universality that does not assume the risks of translation. —Judith Butler1 MILTON: English is my only language, alas. —Tony Kushner2 Both translation studies and performance studies have prospered as significant interdisciplinary fields by providing powerful, conceptual lenses with which to construct new knowledge in the humanities and social sciences. In addition to the question, "What happens if we look at these phenomena as a performance?" contemporary critics have begun to ask, "What happens if we consider these phenomena a translation?"3 Both disciplines claim genealogies going back to the Greeks, have suffered secondary status in relation to the sources they provide with an "afterlife,"4 and depend upon practitioners who may or may not do theory. But the fields' current configurations can be traced to the impact of poststructuralist theories of language, identity, and power [End Page 389] associated with cultural studies more generally since the 1970s. As one might expect when scholars working on widely different material are reading the same theorists, conceptual metaphors resonate differently depending on their provenance as well as their use. For example, Judith Butler's concept of "gender performativity" was taken up by feminist theatre scholars in ways that led to Butler's own disclaimers about just how much agency was implied in this term.5 A similar issue has arisen around the widespread appropriation of the term "translation" in work having little to do with the actual translation of written or spoken words from one language to another. Postcolonial critic Homi Bhabha, for example, uses translation in its most figurative sense to describe and analyze the effects of Third World migrancy in primarily Western multicultural locations.6 Indeed, the very productivity associated with performance and translation as metaphors, and the speed with which they are taken up in both popular and critical discourse, tends to undermine their specific theoretical utility. Such an argument is familiar: if any behavior can be viewed as performance and any communicative act can be viewed as translation, then knowledge produced within particular disciplinary frameworks may seem imperiled, especially to those most committed to the fields being raided, whether translators or theatre practitioners. Is it possible to deploy translation as a trope without diminishing the value of the concept as it derives from specific linguistic practices? And is it useful to do so? Certainly 9/11 and the misguided foreign-policy initiatives that have ensued highlight the problem and urgency of adequate cultural translation along with the need for actual translators. War is not simply the continuation of policy by other means but, as Emily Apter has so appropriately noted, "the continuation of extreme mistranslation or disagreement by other means."7 Current geopolitical conflicts have thrust us, willingly or not, into what Apter calls "the translation zone" (undoubtedly alluding to Mary Louise Pratt's "contact zone"), a highly hazardous arena where mistranslation has deadly consequences. While this is not a new dilemma, theorists like Butler have recently taken up the relationship among cultural understanding, translation, and ethical action with renewed interest. Even before 9/11, Butler was turning to a concept of "cultural translation" as the most generative approach to political ethics, noting in Conversations on the Left with Slavoj Žižek and Ernesto Laclau that "the very concept of universality compels an understanding of culture as a relation of exchange and a task of translation."8 In answer to whether the critiques of ideology, strategic essentialism, or false universals can themselves produce an effective progressive politics—a question also asked by post-Brechtian political playwrights—Butler advances a "counter-imperialistic concept of translation," one that does not presume linguistic or cognitive commonness nor an [End Page 390] ultimate fusion of perspectives.9 Apter suggests that for Butler, "the form of universality is translation itself—albeit performative, alive to the syntactic stagings of linguistic difference."10 In her most recent work, Butler's use of cultural translation seems especially indebted to Bhabha's The Location of Culture, in particular, "How Newness Enters the World: Postmodern Space, Postcolonial Times and the Trials of Cultural Translation," a chapter that develops Walter...

Translation, as a concept, may be regarded as a prototype of a ‘travelling concept’ as it has travelled to numerous disciplines in recent years. Therefore, a ‘translational turn’ was proclaimed for the humanities, cultural studies, and social sciences (cf.Bachmann-Medick 2007,2009).Outside of translation studies, the use of the translation concept is not bound to “translation proper” (Jakobson 1959, 232) or to the way in which the concept is used and defined in translation studies. Consequently, ‘translation’ is usually used as a very broad metaphor in translation studies’ neighbouring disciplines and fields of research. This mobility shows the potential and high polysemantic value of the translation concept. What we are missing, however, is a ‘translaboration’ between translation studies and the various other disciplines that employ translation studies’ master concept.The paper will illustrate the background of the translational turn and the rise of the notion of ‘cultural translation’ as well as the deployment of the translation category in organisation studies and sociology. It will thus limit itself to examples from cultural studies and the social sciences. The paper’s aim is to revise and dispel some of the misconceptions held against translation proper and the discipline of translation studies, thereby showing that translation studies has the conceptual and theoretical grounding to be the leading discipline for the unfolding of a translational turn outside its disciplinary borders. Furthermore, the paper will show the common ground for a translaboration from which both translation studies and its neighbouring disciplines could ultimately benefit.

This article links, and elaborates on, several concepts related to translation and Translation Studies through the analysis of plurisemiotic artworks, integrating images and words. Translation Studies also provides the framework for analysing the various modes in which these works are received by the audience and artistic establishment. The main concepts referred to are 'intrasemiotic translation', 'self-translation' and 'cultural translation'. The latter two are combined to create the metaphor 'cultural (self) translation'. The works analysed, which form part of what we call 'a self-project', were featured in the exhibition "Pravda" (meaning 'truth' in Russian) – a collection of thematically interrelated paintings by the Israeli artist Zoya Cherkassky, shown at The Israel Museum, Jerusalem in 2018 – and included in the exhibition catalogue. Beyond offering insights into Cherkassky's works, the multifold contribution of this article includes: linking the concepts of 'intrasemiotic translation' and 'self-translation' to plurisemiotic practices; expanding the concept of 'self-translation' and placing it in the context of cultural translation; and employing the latter concept in a discussion about the artist's reception in an immigrant society characterised by constant negotiation regarding the diverse identities of its members.

The 21st century witnessed the emergence of Translation Studies, which include linguistics, comparative literature, sociology, semiotics, and communication. Translation Studies is also an interdisciplinary field that deals with the study of the theory, the description and application of translation, and cultural translation. Cultural Translation, which encompasses postcolonial translation studies, cultural gaps, and cultural manipulation, requires training the students of translation in the areas of social anthropology to help them achieve cultural and intercultural competence. Therefore, the purpose of the current quasi-experimental study was to provide the students with new translation training to help them understand the role of culture in translation. Examining the relationship between translation, linguistics, education, and social anthropology showed a shift in the purpose of translation from transferring information into a task of transmitting culture. Such a shift necessitates training the students to acquire socio-cultural skills by engaging them in discussions and dialogues about the culture of the original texts. The current study was an attempt to help students perceive the relationship between translation and culture to understand that some texts, specifically literary texts, do not only involve mastering two languages syntactically and semantically, but they also require communicative skills to analyze the social anthropological aspects of the texts, including culture, religion, and ideological and political issues. Therefore, this study applied the recent collaborative pedagogy for translation, which is based on improving social and cultural skills, for providing the students with the strategies for enhancing their professional practices within a social-constructivist educational environment. Moreover, emphasizing the concept of cultural turn in the work of polysystems in translation, the significance of this study lies in analyzing a number of theories to examine the relationship between translation, linguistics, and social anthropology and their impact on students’ culture and intercultural competence.

Cet article s'inscrit dans la continuité des travaux de Gayatri Spivak et vise à prolonger la critique de cet auteur à l'encontre de l'insensibilité linguistique des cultural studies anglo-américaines.

Modern comparative literature with globalization phenomenon extends linguistic and political boundaries, even for conserving and revitalizing languages particularly minor languages with cultural and ethnic exchanges. Such this emergence of comparative literature might return from contemporary translational and cultural studies as crucial and effective factors in the study of comparative literature. The role, relationship, and impact of translation and cultural studies on modern comparative literature are explored via a descriptive analysis. Translational and cultural studies in current comparative literature studies facilitate the relevant studies and they play a supplementary role for literary study. This study confirms a significant relationship exists among contemporary translational, cultural, and literary works intangibly and inevitably that helps to study comparative literary works. The findings report cultural and translational studies can be fruity informing literary studies, new writing styles besides intercultural conversation; nevertheless, scholars of comparative literature have argued that their discipline has been significantly subsumed and substituted by translation studies. The results indicate contemporary translation and cultural studies have paved the way for comparative literature researchers to achieve cultural knowledge and to strengthen the culture with developing national literature.

As translation studies has been performed based on texts, the historicity and the politicity of translating activity remain unnoticed. Meanwhile, the post-colonialism ‘cultural translation’ theory considers cultural contacts and negotiations to be translation and recognizes such translating activity as a practice of political discussion. The ‘cultural translation’ theory by Bhabha who was inspired by Benjamin assuming that language is constitutive, rather than communicative, in the course of representing thoughts and reality has emerged noticeably in the translation studies by virtue of Venuti who emphasizes the ‘minoritization’ translation. This study aims to look at how the ‘cultural translation’ of Bhabha has been deployed as discursive practices and how it has been succeeded ・developed as a translation theory as well as to analyze・describe Yu Miri’s ‘The End of August’, introduced as a specific example of practices of ‘cultural translation’, from the cultural translation’s perspective. Specifically, it studies the flow of a theory so called ‘translation without translating’ represented through ‘Walter Benjamin → Homi Bhabha → Lawrence Venuti and then discusses how the hybridity of ‘the End of August’, unveiled by ‘foreginization’, is disappearing through the process of ‘domestication’ in the Korean translation of ‘The Other Side of August’.

The essay explores the evolving conceptualisation of translation, moving from a traditional focus on linguistic aspects to an expansive cultural and metaphorical approach. It analyses how this shift challenges and redefines the boundaries of translation studies. The essay specifically underscores the interdisciplinary nature of the concept of cultural translation, showcasing its possible role as a nexus among diverse academic fields such as linguistics, sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies. It advocates that cultural translation c an serve as a crucial tool not only for deciphering intricate intercultural dynamics and exchanges but also for expor ting theories and insights from translation studies to other disciplines. In this way, cultural translation emerges as a liminal interdisciplinary portal, which reciprocally broadens and amplifies the scope and impact of translation studies. That is, while the co nceptual robustness of cultural translation enriches the field of translation studies, the insights and theories nurtured within this field can be propagated to adjacent disciplines via the intermediary of cultural translation.

This article focuses on bodily writing as a performance of virtue in premodern China. Bodily writing includes inscribing text on the body (tattooing), mutilation, and blood-letter-writing. These "bloody" acts were originally associated with the lowly or marginalized class but coopted by the mainstream society as a means of performing virtue. Virtuous bodily writing is gender-specific, especially as displayed on stage: while male writing surpasses the body, a split has to be inserted between the female body and text to ensure pleasure. The article further addresses the issue of cultural translation in the transnational context, with an analysis of the controversial tattooing scene in Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior.

Cultural translation promotes cross-cultural synthetization and hybridization. Against the backdrop of cultural assimilation and inherent conceptual contestation of different languages, the cultural meaning of the source performance text is interpreted and reconstructed by specific cultural translator who intentionally creates the aesthetic value and significance for a specific target readership/audience. Drawing on Valsiner’s cultural psychology and Marais’ notion of representamen translation, this paper focuses on an exemplary example of a cross-cultural stardom-fandom exchange regarding the Korean artist Lee Joon Gi, who produces his translational performance texts of the source Chinese performance texts for his target Chinese audience. The psychological-semiotic approach to Translation Studies also explores the issue of translated cultural identity within cultural translation. Thus, the concept of translational performance text is proposed as Lee is deemed as both cultural translator and translated cultural product simultaneously. On the one hand, by incorporating non-linguistic semiotic process-phenomena into the conventional linguistic-biased Translation Studies, Translation Studies could be nurtured promisingly with cultural psychology and semiotics for interdisciplinary progress. On the other hand, a translational perspective enhances the understanding of the profound psychological-semiotic aspect of cultural translation pertaining to the production of entertainment jouissance within cultural translation.

Clarification of conceptual and terminological apparatus is an urgent task of modern pedagogy, in this connection the paper deals with the concept of pedagogical event, as well as its relationship with the main pedagogical categories: education, training and upbringing. Based on the research conducted within the social and human sciences, the integral features of the event, such as the significance of changes in the life of the subject and spatial and temporal characteristics were identified, which allowed to define the pedagogical event in an interdisciplinary dynamic aspect. One of the main functions of education in the modern world is the transmission of culture from one generation to another, reproduction and development of culture. If the aim of education is understood as the transmission, reproduction and generation of culture, the pedagogical event can be defined as a change through adaptation of cultural experience of humanity to the cultural experience of the student, i.e. translation of culture from one person to another.

This article is based on an intercultural conception of what translating means. First, I illustrate some of the links between cultural studies and translation studies. Translation is defined as an intercultural practice, so the idea that both fields of study converge at a given point is supported. Second, I argue for the figure of the translator as an intercultural expert or mediator, a perception that stems directly from the conception of translation that underlies this paper. Finally, I reflect on the weight that certain cultural notions have in audiovisual translation, focusing on the key role of cultural referents and intertextual allusions. These elements are portrayed as possible restrictions (mainly because of the shared knowledge that is necessary for their comprehension), and their transmission (particularly in the case of cultural referents) is depicted as a consequence of cultural globalization.

Este trabalho objetiva o diálogo entre História, Antropologia e Estudos da Tradução, com enfoque na Tradução Cultural. Para tal, parte-se do exemplo dos relatos deixados pelo cronista e viajante francês La Condamine, que expedicionou a Amazônia em finais da primeira metade do século XVIII, publicando seus registros quando de seu retorno ao continente europeu. Utiliza-se aqui recentes discussões, através das quais se torna possível entrever nos relatos indicações do uso da tradução cultural, em suas diferentes instâncias. Apresenta-se uma breve introdução, seguida de contextualização teórico-epistemológica e histórica concernente ao trabalho do cientista francês e sua figura científica. Aborda-se também a tradução cultural e como pode ser pensada, de forma a preparar o leitor para o próximo tópico, que entrecruzando as discussões anteriores, mostra exemplos de tradução cultural nos textos de La Condamine em várias manifestações, sejam elas idiomáticas, linguísticas ou etnocêntricas e das considerações finais. A partir da abordagem proposta e das discussões desenvolvidas, pode-se pensar em diferentes formas de leitura de registros históricos dos viajantes, destacando-se o potencial que apresentam para análises nos campos dos estudos culturais e tradutórios, dentre os quais os do autor analisado são ricos exemplos do contato com o “outro”.

The debate on what cultural translation as an analytical and political tool can offer has sparked much discussion in translation studies as well as in the fields of anthropology, literature, and cultural studies. To a lesser degree, some museum studies scholars have likewise evoked the notion of translation to address the ethics of representing culture in and across differences. This article expands on these discussions by evaluating whether a translational lens can serve to rethink the display of African material culture in museums. Through an analysis of the textual, spatial, and visual elements of the permanent African exhibition at the Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac (MQB) in Paris, France, I argue that though the MQB claims that it seeks to foster cultural dialogue, the “translations” of its African collection tend to reproduce the museum’s norms of meaning-making, rather than the norms of the non-European cultures it presents. However, I also suggest that by approaching its task as one of multimodal translation, the MQB could reshape its museographic language to reflect ways of making meaning that are more evenly in dialogue with ways of making meaning from the objects’ contexts of origin.

The fields of Translation and Cultural Studies can be seen as encircled within an interdisciplinary framework with fluid boundaries. Focusing my attention on the phrase "the translation of cultures" I will try to explore different meanings of the word "translation'' the way this activity is performed, and by whom. My purpose is to analyze the role of both the ethnographer and the translator as interpreters of experience. I will try to deepen in the dilemmas of "relativism" and "manipulation" of information as a result of that evaluative discrimination they have to do and the current tendencies