Translation and Identity

Translation and Identity Identity is one of the most important political and cultural issues of our time. Translation and Identity looks at how translation has played a crucial role in shaping debates around identity, language and cultural survival in the past and in the present. The volume explores how everything, from the impact of migration to the curricula for national literature courses to the way in which nations wage war in the modern era, is bound up with urgent questions of translation and identity. The book examines translation practices and experiences across continents to show how translation is an integral part of how cultures are evolving, offering new per- spectives on how translation can be a powerful tool both to enhance difference and to promote intercultural dialogue. Drawing on a wide range of materials from official government reports to Shakespearean drama to Hollywood films, Translation and Identity demonstrates that translation is central to any proper understanding of the emergence of cultural identity in human history, and offers an innovative and positive vision of the way in which translation can be used to deal with one of the most salient issues in an increasingly borderless world. Michael Cronin is Director of the Centre for Translation and Textual Studies, Dublin City University. He is the author of Translating Ireland (1996), Across the Lines: Travel, Language and Translation (2000) for which he was awarded the CATS Vinay Darbelnet Prize, and Translation and Globalization (2003). Translation and Identity Michael Cronin First published 2006 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2006 Michael Cronin All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Cronin, Michael, 1960– Translation and identity / Michael Cronin. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0–415–36465–5 (pb) — ISBN 0–415–36464–7 (hb) 1. Translating and interpreting—Social aspects. 2. Pluralism (Social sciences) 3. Identity (Psychology) I. Title. P306.97.S63C76 2006 418′.02—dc22 2005030926 ISBN10: 0–415–36464–7 (hbk) ISBN10: 0–415–36465–5 (pbk) ISBN10: 0–203–01569–X (ebk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–36464–5 (hbk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–36465–2 (pbk) ISBN13: 978–0–203–01569–8 (ebk) For Evelyn, Barra and Peter, dlúthchairde Contents Acknowledgements ix Introduction: identity papers 1 1 Translation and the new cosmopolitanism 6 Cosmopolitanism 7 Micro-cosmopolitanism 14 City and country 17 Global hybrids 20 A transnational history of translation 23 Mutable mobiles 26 Bottom-up localization 28 Loose canons 30 European unions 34 2 Translation and migration 43 Migration 44 Culture 46 Locale 50 Translational assimilation 52 Translational accommodation 56 Articulation 63 Extrinsic and intrinsic translation 64 Citizenship 70 3 Interpreting identity 75 Embodied agency 76 The interpreter’s testimony 79 Diplomats, spies and officials 82 Metonymic presence 87 viii Contents Judging interpreters 89 Eloquence 94 Double dealing 97 Forging the nation 102 Metaphor and relational semantics 104 Metamorphosis 105 Actionable intelligence 112 The interpreter’s visibility 116 4 The future of diversity 120 Bridge and door 120 The decline of diversity 125 Cultural negentropy 129 Holograms 132 Emergence 135 Small worlds and weak ties 140 Bibliography 144 Index 158 Acknowledgements A recurrent theme of Translation and Identity is the constant interaction between the local and the global. In writing the work it has been my own good fortune to benefit from local friendships and global supports. I would first like to record my gratitude to the Governing Authority of Dublin City University which granted me sabbatical leave for the academic year 2004–5, thus allowing me to finish work on the book. I would also like to acknowledge the encouragement and inspira- tion offered by my colleagues in the Centre for Translation and Textual Studies and in the School for Applied Language and Intercultural Studies, Dublin City University. Special mention must also be made of the DCU/St Patrick’s College Philosophy Reading Group which has been a recurrent source of fresh and innovative thinking. In working through the issues that inform the present volume I am particularly grateful to colleagues and institutions around the world that have helped me arrive at a clearer understanding of the global dimension to the questions addressed. Among the institutions and bodies I would like to thank are: University of Wolverhampton; Sheffield Hallam University; Università degli Studi Roma Tre; Queen’s University, Belfast; Concordia University; Université de Moncton; University of Toronto; Heriot-Watt University; University of Edinburgh; Universitat Rovira i Virigili; National University of Ireland, Galway; University of Salford; University of Lisbon; University of Oporto; Princess Grace Irish Library, Monaco; St Mary’s University, Halifax; University of Warwick; Academy of Irish Heritages, University of Ulster; University of Utrecht; Royal Irish Academy; Université de Paris III-Sorbonne Nouvelle; Centre for Asian and African Literatures, SOAS, and University College London. I would particularly like to thank Gavan Titley, Michelle Woods, Rita McCann, Sylvie Kleinman and Caoimhghín Ó Croidheáin for the privilege of their company and their conversation as we explored the territory of our common research interests. A special word of thanks also to the editorial staff at Routledge for their kindness and patience in bringing the book to publication. The book is dedicated to Evelyn Conlon, Barra Ó Séaghdha and Peter Sirr who have been unstinting in their friendship and support through the years. Sections of chapters 1 and 3 have appeared in earlier versions in Languages and Intercultural Communication, vol. 5, no. 2; Translation Ireland Yearbook 2004, x Acknowledgements Dublin: Irish Translators Association, 2004; Niall Ó Ciosáin (ed.) Explaining Change in Cultural History, Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2005; Jean Morencey, Hélène Destrempes, Denise Merkle and Martin Pâquet (eds) Des cultures en contact: Visions de l’Amérique du Nord francophone, Québec: Nota bene, 2005; Paul St-Pierre and Prafulla C. Kar (eds) In Translation: Reflections, Refractions, Transformations, Delhi: Pencraft International, 2005; New Hibernia Review, vol. 8, no. 4; Alyce von Rothkirch and Daniel Williams (eds) Beyond the Difference: Welsh Literature in Comparative Contexts Essays for M. Wynn Thomas at Sixty, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2004; Maria Tymoczko and Colin Ireland (eds) Language and Tradition in Ireland, Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003. All translations, unless otherwise stated, are my own. Introduction Identity papers Augustine of Hippo did not believe in language miracles. In sketching a map of human community from the household to the world, he saw diversity of languages as what most obviously set humans apart from each other: For if two men meet, and are forced by some compelling reason not to pass on but to stay in company, then if neither knows the other’s language, it is easier for dumb animals, even of different kinds, to associate together than these men, although both are human beings. For when men cannot commu- nicate their thoughts to each other, simply because of difference of language, all of the similarity of their common human nature is of no avail to unite them in fellowship. So true is this that a man would be more cheerful with his dog for company than with a foreigner. (Augustine 1984: 861) Augustine is attentive, however, to what the ‘Imperial City’ has done to solve this problem, namely impose a common language. For the North African Doctor of the Latin Church, coercion in matters of language is rarely a happy affair and he remarks, ‘think of the cost of this achievement! Consider the scale of these wars, with all that slaughter of human beings, all the human blood that was shed’ (ibid., 861). So language contact and language change are not innocent transactions as language itself is intimately bound up with what makes humans different from each other. Missing from the account above is, of course, the translator. Translation and Identity is about the role of Augustine’s missing link and how, from the household to the city to the world, translation must be at the centre of any attempt to think about questions of identity in human society. In order to do this, it is worth considering why identity has emerged as such an important issue in contemporary debate both inside and outside the academy. The end of what the political scientist Philip Bobbitt has called the Long War, with the signing of the Charter of Paris allowing for parliamentary institutions in all the participating member states of the Conference on

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