Finding Translations. on the Use of Bibliographical Databases in Translation History
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Finding Translations. On the Use of Bibliographical Databases in Translation History sandra poupaud Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain [email protected] anthony pym Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain [email protected] ester torres simón Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain [email protected] RÉSUMÉ Dans toute étude de traductions, il faut tout d’abord déterminer l’objet qui doit être pris en compte comme une « traduction », puis comment le trouver, en général en ayant recours à des bases de données bibliographiques. Partant de la conception maximaliste selon laquelle les traductions sont potentiellement omniprésentes, nous proposons que les différents processus de distribution imposent une série de filtres sélectifs grâce auxquels certaines traductions sont plus facilement identifiées et accessibles que d’autres. L’étude des traductions doit tenir compte de ces filtres préalables et être à même de les expliquer, parfois de les surmonter. Les processus de recherche imposent ensuite, nécessairement, leurs propres filtres sélectifs, qui peuvent réduire ou augmenter le nombre et le genre des traductions issues des filtres préalables. Nous présentons ici trois projets de recherche dans lesquels les rôles respectifs des filtres préalables et des filtres de recherche sont très différents. Pour des hypothèses très spécifiques et à grande échelle, l’Index Translationum peut être relativement efficace. Pour des projets plus détaillés tels que l’étude des flux de traductions entre l’espagnol et le français pendant une période spécifique, une base de données destinée à l’usage des professionnels de l’édition offre des avantages significatifs. Enfin, pour une étude, marquée par la rareté des textes, portant sur les traductions du coréen en anglais après la guerre de Corée, il est nécessaire de combiner plusieurs bases de données, la plus efficace se révélant être celle d’Amazon. ABSTRACT In any study of translations one must first decide what is to be counted as a “translation” and how such things are to be found, usually through recourse to bibliographical data- bases. We propose that, starting from the maximalist view that translations are potentially everywhere, various distribution processes impose a series of selective filters thanks to which some translations are more easily identified and accessible than others. The study of translation must be aware of these prior filters, and must know how to account for them, and sometimes how to overcome them. Research processes then necessarily impose their own selective filters, which may reduce or extend the number and kinds of translations given by prior filters. We present three research projects where the play of prior and research filters is very different. For one-off large-scale relational hypotheses, the Index Translationum is found to be relatively cost-efficient. For more detailed objects such as translation flows from Spanish into French in a specific period, a book-industry database offers significant advantages. And for a study marked by a paucity of texts, as Meta LIV, 2, 2009 finding translations 265 is the case of translation from Korean into English following the Korean War, a combina- tion of databases is necessary, the most useful turning out to be Amazon. MOTS-CLÉS/KEYWORDS histoire de la traduction, définitions de la traduction, méthodologie de recherche, biblio- métrie translation history, definitions of translation, research methodology, bibliometrics 1. Introduction When undertaking virtually any study of translations, you have to find, identify and select the translations you want to talk about. The task may seem banal and even straightforward. However, what you find, and especially where you find it, can con- dition not just your object of study but also, very significantly, the kinds of results you come up with. This article will review the way translations have been found in three quite dif- ferent research projects. The first is a one-off study of the general relations between translations and the size of target markets, designed to test a specific simple hypoth- esis; the second is an ongoing research project on translations from Spanish in France in the period 1980-2000; and the third looks at translations from Korean into US English in the period following the Korean War. The practical problems encountered in these projects are extremely diverse, as indeed have been the databases we have worked from. We will be giving consideration to the UNESCO Index Translationum, to a professional book-industry database (Electre), and to an online bookseller (Amazon). Our aim is to sketch out the advantages and limitations of each database. The principles and problems, however, are more general, and concern many other kinds of bibliographies and catalogues. 2. Three principles In principle (the first principle), translations are everywhere, at all times. It just depends on where you look, and on what you call a translation. More technically, one must assume the ubiquity of the object and then consider the way representations necessarily filter that object into presence. The filtering happens first by the semiot- ics of metadata and the technologies of distribution (the world calls some texts “translations,” then makes some of them easier to find than others), and second by the definitions put to work in each particular research project (some kinds of trans- lations are the ones the researcher wants to find). This actually gives us three prin- ciples, which may require brief elaboration. 2.1. Principle of ubiquity: Translations are everywhere Unless stated otherwise, translations may be the result of any communication, intra- lingual or interlingual, involving meaning transformation. This is the kind of broad definition currently in vogue in a certain postmodern sociology (see Renn 2006; Akrich et al. 2006) and indeed in the vogue of “cultural translation” in a perennially reinvented Cultural Studies. As such, translation may be seen as occurring wherever different languages or indeed different discourses are in contact; translations are 266 Meta, LIV, 2, 2009 constantly spoken, and of course thought. Translation is thus basic to any situation for which homogeneity cannot be assumed. Indeed, translation would very much be a constitutive feature of the dreams of a publican and his wife happily asleep upstairs in the pub in Chapelizod, Ireland. But we would not know about those dreams, or those particular translations of the self and the world, had they not been published in Finnegans Wake. The only problem with this first principle is that much of the world spends some time and more energy stating otherwise. 2.2. Principle of the prior filter: If you find a translation, someone wanted you to find it Only some translative activity turns into texts (spoken or written stretches of dis- course attributed with macrostructural unity), and only some texts attain significant distribution. They are recorded, reproduced, written down, or otherwise put into a form that can be moved away from the situation of production. Some are then accorded “epitexts” (Genette’s term for publicity material, interviews, etc. that pro- mote a text) and a string of “metatexts” (all the texts about the text, including entries in library catalogues, bibliographical listings, and a place in the kinds of catalogues that interest us here). For some, those epitexts and metatexts are also translations, but there is no need to complicate definitions at this stage. Let us bundle together all those technologies, efforts and semiotic representations and call the sum the “prior filter,” meaning that these are the selection processes that happened prior to our own intervention in history. Most texts, of course, are filtered out by these processes, either because they are considered to be of not enough value to set off extensive reproduc- tive machinery, or because there are active interests in keeping them away from any kind of distribution. For example, several members of our research group have spent some years t rying to record the work of interpreters and cultural mediators in hospitals. We are trying to give the translations a technology (audio or video recording) that can turn them into an object of knowledge. Yet the resistance is insidious: the hospital administrators politely refuse, for a hundred reasons that have nothing to do with the fact that they do not want us to find out why they should spend money on inter- preters, and the interpreters themselves refuse, since they are underpaid, thus untrained, and not particularly proud of what they do anyway. And no one got as far as asking the patients. There is thus a kind of institutional consensus that these par- ticular translations should not be looked at beyond their immediate communicative situation. This would be active negative filtering, which one may or may not want to challenge. There are other kinds of negative filtering. For example, many historical transla- tions into French sought to avoid censorship by having the place of publication printed as “Amsterdam” or “Brussels” or “Strasbourg,” or indeed anywhere outside the national territory of France. That way they did not have to send a copy to the government authorities (the dépôt légal). The printer could thus not be prosecuted. This meant, however, that the title was then not listed in the Bibliothèque de France, and is thus not listed in any database derived from that inventory. That includes, unfortunately, the Bibliographie des traductions françaises (1810-1840) (Van Bragt finding translations 267 1995), which remains a magnificent piece of work awaiting some good research hypotheses (see the review by Pym 1997). The printers avoided the censor, but they thereby avoided all the state mechanisms for metadata and distribution. In the age of nations, one still needs a passport in order to travel. On the other hand, some translations are relatively easy to find. Not only are they printed or otherwise inscribed, but they are promoted in the media, spawn myriad epitexts, enter all the catalogues and bibliographies, and may be otherwise propelled into the world through the instruments of public or supra-national policy.