3 Cultural Mediators and Their Complex Transfer Practices

3 Cultural Mediators and Their Complex Transfer Practices Reine Meylaerts Introduction: A Research Journey The models and concepts of polysystem theory (Even-Zohar 2005 ), descriptive translation studies ( Toury 2012 ) and translation sociology ( Simeoni 1998 ; Heilbron 2008; Meylaerts 2008 ) have been instrumental in many respects for a better understanding of cultural interactions, cultural transfer and cultural dynamics. Let me take my own research journey as an example here. For many years, I have been studying cultural history in Belgium, mainly through the literary and cultural interactions between the Flemish1 and Francophone Belgian literatures. I analyzed literary translations during the interwar period (1920–1940), which was, quantitatively speaking, the period in which literary translations counted for more than 50% of all translations published in Belgium. Moreover, literary translations from Flemish into French reached their highest number in Belgian history: at no other point in time would the annual number of book translations from Flemish into French be higher in Belgium.Applying the models and concepts of polysystem theory (PST) and descriptive translation studies (DTS), I analyzed the preliminary norms2 or selection criteria for these translations and discovered that the overwhelming majority of literary translations were Flemish regionalist novels translated into French. Moreover, since, as a rule, there is no symmetry in literary interference ( Even-Zohar 2005 , 62), translations from French into Flemish were almost absent. These preliminary norms appeared perfectly in line with the socio-linguistic, socio-cultural and socio-political context of multilingual interwar Belgium. Translations took place against the background of an ongoing linguistic conflict— known as the language question—between Francophone and Flemish- speaking groups, in which some Flemish-speaking groups were striving for their linguistic, cultural and political emancipation. The origin of this conflict was the institutionalization of French as the main language of the administration, the legal and political systems, education and the army in Belgium, while Flemish, although spoken by a majority of the people, remained a less institutionalized minoritized language. In the North of Cultural Mediators and Complex Transfer Practices 47 the country, that is, Flanders, linguistic oppositions went hand in hand with social stratification. The lower classes spoke Flemish (or rather, one of several Flemish dialects), while the upper classes spoke French. A large group of Flemings, mostly from the middle classes, were bilingual: speaking French was the best guarantee for social advancement. Conse- quently, Flemish translations of Francophone literature were not needed since the average middle-class Flemish interwar reader was bilingual and thus perfectly capable of reading French. The Francophones, on the other hand, had no linguistic or political benefit in learning Flemish and thus needed French translations. Moreover, following further insights of PST ( Even-Zohar 2005 , 46–52), I argued that Francophones’ interest in Flemish literature was the perfectly logical answer to a perceived threat. Indeed, in a period of heightened linguistic struggles in which the Flem- ish minority culture was striving for emancipation, for equal linguistic, political and cultural rights, and thus threatening the dominant posi- tion of the Francophones, the translations of Flemish regionalist novels into French confirmed a simple, picturesque and backward Flanders in which simple peasants were quietly living in their small villages. As such, the translations were part of a conservative Francophone answer to the emancipation claims of the Flemish minority: they contributed to the stability of the receiving system. As for the operational norms, 3 when comparing source and target texts, I discovered that the use of popular, familiar or even vulgar language, often independently from the source text, also contributed to confirming the image of a backward, popular and inoffensive Flanders, not the Flanders of the emancipation claims (for a more elaborate version, see Meylaerts 2004a ). This type of analysis is frequent in translation studies—and in many other disciplines. It decomposes a complex aggregate of interrelated ele- ments into a number of elementary, simple units. It then shows how these units follow a number of general patterns (e.g. the previously mentioned preliminary and operational norms) which together form a logical unity or system—here the system of Flemish literary translations into French in interwar Belgium. This type of analysis shapes order in the chaos: it makes more or less linear causality claims, and it holds the promise of a certain generalization or even predictability and determinism. Even- Zohar’s “Laws of Literary Interference” ( Even-Zohar 2005 , 53–72) or the search for empirical generalizations and universals of translation ( Chesterman 2011 ) are illustrative of this tendency in translation studies. Although this type of analysis may be correct, it is too simple. It holds a danger of simplification and of being blinded by the concepts and models used (which of course applies to any theoretical model). Since the very start of my research on literary and cultural interactions in Belgium, I was indeed struggling with several questions that cast doubts on my insights, which were contradicting the insights of DTS and PST and made me aware of some blind spots in my analysis. Let me give some 48 Reine Meylaerts examples. Analyzing the reception of Flemish translations into French, I discovered how these translations were also read and reviewed in the Flemish source culture. This finding contradicts one of the most impor- tant tenets of DTS: that translations are facts of the target or hosting culture ( Toury 2012 , 17–34). Breaking away from an almost exclusive focus on the source text and culture, Toury’s focus on the target text and culture has indeed functioned as a Copernican revolution “by reorient- ing studies on translation, which until then had concentrated predomi- nantly on the source text as the yardstick for an evaluative analysis of the target text as a mere reproduction thereof” (Assis Rosa 2010 , 98). However, as has been observed by other translation studies scholars (see, e.g. Pym 1998 ) and as is illustrated by my own findings, this emphasis on the target culture is too simple: it reduces the numerous complex relationships between source and target cultures to a unilateral one. Simi- larly, when reconstructing the translation process, I discovered that some Flemish authors participated in the translation of their texts, which is another illustration of complex relationships between source and target cultures and which goes against translation studies’ conceptualization of a clear separation between the roles of author and translator. Moreover, it proved impossible to make generalizations, let alone predictions, with regard to translatorship. Why did a successful translator suddenly stop translating? Why did a perfect bilingual refuse to translate? Why did a Fleming, a supporter of the Flemish emancipation, take on the role of translator into French? In a general climate of language struggles and seemingly clear divisions between the choice of Flemish or French as a writing language, why did some Flemings write in French to promote the Flemish cause? On a more abstract level, I was struggling with the complex relations between source and target culture, between transla- tors and norms, between the individual and the collective or between agency and structure, all of which translation studies has traditionally conceptualized in a simplified manner as binary oppositions. These and other questions kept me busy, looking for models that would allow a more complex understanding of cultural contacts, cultural transfer, cultural history and dynamics. They all pointed to a need to conceptual- ize exceptions, randomness, complexity, change. In other words, they pointed to the need for an epistemology of complexity based on the insights of complexity theory that is precisely designed for dealing with the previously mentioned issues. This is what, from a translation studies and more in general a social sciences perspective, has, for example, been proposed by Marais (2015 ), Byrne and Callaghan (2014 ) and Cairney (2012 ). Let me try to explain some of complexity theory’s key insights and explore what it can bring to translation studies in general4 and to a better understanding of cultural interactions, cultural transfer and cultural dynamics in Belgium in particular. Cultural Mediators and Complex Transfer Practices 49 The Paradigm of Order and Simplicity The following quotation gives a good synthesis of what complexity theory stands for. Complexity theory is generally sold as a new approach to science in which we identify (and then explain) systems or processes that lack the order and stability required to produce universal rules about behaviour and outcomes. When applied to the sciences as a whole, it is described as a revolutionary break from the “reductionist” approach to science and the “paradigm of order” (. .), or as a new “way of thinking” and “seeing the world”; as a “world of instability and fuctuations” when in the past it was seen as “stable” (Newton’s laws are often used as an example of the old way of thinking). ( Cairney 2012 , 347) Complexity theory indeed challenges the notions of disjunction, abstrac-

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