Translation and Evolution: The Historical Transmission of Culture through Artificial Selection

Abstract

The problem to be investigated in this article concerns the intricate tradition whereby translation has been historically affecting the evolution of human cultures; nevertheless, the general context of my investigation is not at all positioned in the sphere of biological or cultural repertoire as if they were delineated independently. I understand, on the contrary, that placing oneself in the position of that observer who gazes upon the abundant interaction between genes and cultural stimuli (not as enemies but as allies in the process of cultural evolution) would be much more effective than that. In this sense, my specific context regards the historical relevance of translation for the bridge proposed in “Cultural Transmission and Evolution” (Cavalli-Sforza, 2000) between genes, peoples, and languages to be effectively constructed – it seems of paramount importance to have a glimpse on how the process of translation has gradually been entering the game. The emergence of language in the social interactions of our ancestors has been decisive for the evolution of their (and consequently our) cultural environments, so decisive that trying to separate these realms (language and culture) is currently considered not only unfeasible but actually a complete utopia; hence my overall purpose to problematise even more such questionable division. Bearing in mind that my overall intention is to pay a careful look upon the twofold relationship between the evolution of language and that of culture, my specific one is to establish such link in the specific scope of translation practices. That having been said my study shall test two hypotheses; the first hypothesis is that, translation surfaces as a cornerstone in the contemporary process of cultural evolution – given its all-embracing status in the globalised world; my second hypothesis is that, if “[c]ultural transmission is easier, faster, and more efficient when a powerful, authoritarian chief forces the acceptance of an innovation” (Cavalli-Sforza, 182), our contemporary “authoritarian chief forces” have been shaping cultural evolution through translation by deciding what discourses deserve full attention and what are the ones that should be marginalised – generally for threatening what is designed to be taken for granted. The economy of book-selling does not depend on “improving” human culture but on reinforcing anything it might already have taken as natural – notwithstanding its possible and probable ideological, social, and political drawbacks for human cultural evolution in the long-term picture. It seems that any dispassionate and unprejudiced conceptualisation of both genetic and cultural evolution is liable to call for a research tool capable of surpassing mistaken assumptions on supposed evolutionary superiorities and inferiorities – e.g. Hitler’s repulsive appropriation of Darwin’s concept of the survival of the fittest. In this sense I can only hope this article to become one more piece for the panorama of cultural transmission through translation in the process of cultural evolution to be ultimately devised.