There are no rules for translation. Translation is a decision-making process, and each decision point involves uncertainty. In the following article, I would like to show how, from a skopos-theoretical perspective, a top-down procedure can at least reduce uncertainty to some degree. The top level is that of the translation brief, which determines the choice of translation type and form. This is a binary decision. A documentary translation usually “documents” the pragmatics of the source text, whereas an instrumental translation gets a pragmatics of its own, for example with regard to deixis. At the next level, the translator has to deal with cultural norms and conventions. Here, the decision becomes more complex because the brief may require the reproduction of some source-culture behaviours and the adaptation of others to target-culture conventions, both in documentary and instrumental translations. The next level is that of language. We may safely assume that most translations are expected to conform to the norms of the target-language system, but there may be cases where source-language norms have to be reproduced, for example in an interlinear translation for linguistic purposes. At the last two levels, the remaining doubts have to be resolved first in line with contextual restrictions and, ultimately, the translator’s personal preferences, if necessary.
The theorizing of translation in the colonial context in the 1990s, initiated in part by my book Siting Translation, opened up new questions about language and power, inequality and representation. Critiques are now available of both humanistic and ethnographic ideas of translation, which were based on grasping literary value or cultural value through a universalist lens. Such critiques have helped open up the realm of linguistic translation to questions of the political, drawing attention to the asymmetries structuring all acts of translation. In the present essay, I focus on these questions: Why should we open out Translation Studies to questions coming out of feminism, and why should feminism pay attention to translation? What goes into the making of the feminist subject in India? How do we understand the conjuncture of culture and gender in its specific manifestations in the subcontinent?
The aim of this article is to examine the more or less established boundaries of “traductologie”. First, the way ideas and theoretical approaches circulate, mainly viewed from a French perspective and in relation to other disciplines, is broadly discussed. Secondly, the impact of the increasing demands in specialized translations on the growing empirical research conducted in this specific area is analysed. Particular attention is paid to the paradigms shifting from a literary approach to translation towards a pragmatic approach. It is finally suggested that this empirical research, anchored in the functionalist and interpretive theories, yet still haunted by the experience of literary translation, is gradually focusing on the cognitive processes involved in translational behaviour.
Even though different translation theories have convinced us that “a rose is not a rose is not una rosa,” they might not have given us as much insight into the differences between “traduction,” “translation,” and “traducciôn.” Indeed, while there is no shortage of studies on the structural obstacles that stand in the way of traditional equivalence, much less attention has been paid to the cultural and political factors that create and determine the specificity of the translation context. By presenting the case of Quebec, I would like to explain the following thesis: translation takes on very different cultural meanings depending on the context in which it is practiced, and these meanings inevitably influence the strictly linguistic aspects of the translation activity.
