Mona Baker

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Dr. Mona Baker

Mona Baker (born 1953) is an Egyptian professor of translation studies and Director of the
Centre for Translation and International Studies at the University of Manchester in England.[1]

Contents
[hide]

1 Career

2 Middle East conflict and Israeli academics

o 2.1 Response from Professors
o 2.2 Criticism
o 2.3 Support
o 2.4 Baker's Response

3 Works

4 References

5 External links

Career[edit]

Baker studied at the American University in Cairo, where she gained a BA in English and
Comparative Literature. Afterwards she studied in applied linguistics at the University of
Birmingham, obtaining an MA. In 1995 she moved to UMIST where she became a professor in
1997. She currently holds the Chair in Translation Studies[2]
She is the founder of St. Jerome Publishing where she is editorial director. She also founded the
international magazine The Translator.[3]
Since 2009 she has been an honorary member of IAPTI.[4] In the framework of this association
she delivered a speech on "Ethics in the Translation/Interpreting Curriculum" [5] She is also coVice-president of the International Association of Translation and Intercultural Studies.[6]
As a researcher, she is interested in translation and conflict, the role of ethics in research and
training in Translation Studies, the application of narrative theory to translation and
interpretation, activist communities in translation and corpus-based translation studies; she has
published extensively in these areas. She has also edited reference works.

Middle East conflict and Israeli academics[edit]

Mona Baker provides commentary on the Middle East conflict, and research in translation and
intercultural studies. Her website also has sections on the boycott of Israeli academic institutions,
Israel and Palestinian universities, general opinions on the Middle East and calls for boycott of
Israeli products and services.
Baker was a signatory of the 2002 open letter to boycott Israeli institutions.
She received much criticism and created great controversy when she removed two Israeli
academics, Dr. Miriam Shlesinger of Bar-Ilan University and Professor Gideon Toury of Tel Aviv
University, Israel, from the editorial boards of her journals Translator and Translation Studies
Abstracts, based on their affiliation to Israeli institutions.[7][8]
Baker stated that the interpretation of the boycott was her own and she did not necessarily expect
other signatories in a similar position to adopt the same course of action. Prof Baker, of Egyptian
origin, said she was bemused by the row over two "tiny" journals. A spokeswoman for the
university stated that: "This is nothing to do with Umist. The boycott documentation clearly
states Mona Baker signs it as an individual."[9]

Response from Professors[edit]

In an email sent to Professor Toury on 8 June 2002, Baker asked him to resign and warned him
that she would "unappoint you" if he refused. Baker justified her action by stating that "I do not
wish to continue an official association with any Israeli under the present circumstances",
although she also stated that her decision was "political, not personal" and that she still regarded
Professor Toury and Professor Shlesinger as friends.[9]

Professor Toury subsequently responded that "I would appreciate it if the announcement made it
clear that 'he' (that is, I) was appointed as a scholar and unappointed as an Israeli." Toury also
stated that "I am certainly worried, not because of the boycott itself but because it may get bigger
and bigger so that people will not be invited to conferences or lectures, or periodicals will be
judged not on merit, but the identity of the place where the author lives."[9]
Dr Shlesinger responded that: "I don't think [Israeli prime minister] Ariel Sharon is going to
withdraw from the West Bank because Israeli academics are being boycotted. The idea is to
boycott me as an Israeli, but I don't think it achieves anything."[9]

Criticism[edit]
Baker's actions were sharply criticised by Professor Stephen Greenblatt of Harvard University
and the president of the Modern Language Association of America, who called the firings
"repellent", "dangerous" and "morally bankrupt".[10] British Prime Minister Tony Blair also
criticised Baker's actions, and stated that he will "do anything necessary" to stop the academic
boycott of Israeli scholars.[11]
In the British House of Commons, an Early Day Motion (EDM 1590) condemning Baker's
actions was passed, stating that Parliament "deplores discrimination against academics of any
nationality, as being inconsistent with the principle of academic freedom, regards such
discrimination as downright anti-semitic while pretending simply to be opposed to Israeli
government policy... and calls upon UMIST to apologise for this disgusting act and to dismiss
Professor Baker."[12]
Judith Butler suggested that Baker had "engaged established anti-semitic stereotypes."[13]
According to Butler, to claim, as Baker does, "that all Jews hold a given view on Israel or are
adequately represented by Israel is to conflate Jews with Israel and, thereby, to commit an
anti-semitic reduction of Jewishness."[14] According to Professor Jon Pike, "Mona Baker's policy
is, in effect, anti-semitic: she doesn't want to have contact with any individuals who are affiliated
with Israeli institutions, and those people will largely be Jews. And we know, of course, that
Mona Baker thinks these actions are "appropriate" (and, when criticised, complains bitterly about
the Jewish press)."[15]
The National Union of Students (NUS), in addition to condemning academic boycotts as a
whole, specifically condemning Baker's sackings of the two Israeli professors as "racist." Mandy
Telford, president of the NUS, stated that "The National Union of Students stands firmly against
all forms of discrimination. This is an abuse of academic freedom that can only have a negative
impact on students at Umist...We wouldn't support the infringement of [people] being able to
study because of where they live and where they are." Daniel Rose, the NUS's anti-racism
campaign convenor, said: "To exclude people based on their nationality is abhorrent and nothing
short of racism, and should be universally condemned."[16]
In 2002 the European Society for Translation Studies condemned the ousting of Toury and
Shlesinger, both members of the Society, arguing that "in their intellectual work they are not

representatives of their country but individuals who are known for their research, their desire to
develop translation studies and to promote translation and intercultural dialogue."[17]

Support[edit]
Baker received support from a number of sources, including the Muslim Association of Britain
and the Manchester Palestine Solidarity Campaign[18]

Baker's Response[edit]
Baker wrote a detailed response to her critics (a brief summary of which was published in the
London Review of Books). Baker wrote that "the Jewish press in Britain is shamelessly and
exclusively pro-Israel" and cited support for her position from Israeli Professor Ilan Pappe. She
also cited a letter to the editor supporting her from Seymour Alexander, who identified himself as
a British Jew, and Lawrence Davidson, an American Jew who co-authored "In Defence of the
Academic Boycott" with her. She also criticised "the intense and highly distorting smear
campaign led mostly by the Jewish press in the UK against me."[19]
In an interview with Al-Ahram, Baker stated that

"Anybody who thinks they are going to make any change in vicious

Baker also stated that her decision to fire the two Israelis was "intended as a minor symbolic
gesture but simply because of the arrogance of the Zionist lobby it's out of the bag now. And it's
doing some good, I believe, in that it's forcing people to really confront the issues.[12]
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Baker stated that she was the victim of "a large
intimidation machine out there" that attempts to silence criticism of Israel and that "the
Americans are the worst offenders". When asked about the dismissals, she responded to her
critics by stating, "I'm damned if I'm going to be intimidated. This is my interpretation of the
boycott statement that I've signed and I've tried to make that clear but it doesn't seem to be
getting through. I am not actually boycotting Israelis, I am boycotting Israeli institutions". In the
same interview, Baker sharply criticised Israeli policies, stating that: "Israel has gone beyond just
war crimes. It is horrific what is going on there. Many of us would like to talk about it as some
kind of Holocaust which the world will eventually wake up to, much too late, of course, as they
did with the last one."[9][20]
At a conference held in London in 2004 to discuss the implementation of a boycott of Israeli
academic institutions, Baker stated that a boycott of Israel must avoid the appearance of
discrimination and the risk of dilution due to individually chosen exceptions, and proposed that
the academic boycott be cast as an economic boycott, which implies that all academics at Israeli

institutions should be boycotted "to undermine the institutions that allow a pariah state to
function and claim membership of the international community." In support of boycott, Baker
stated "supporters of an economic boycott [against Tourism to Israel] do not ask whether the
individual hotel workers who are being laid off in Israel are individually for or against the
occupation.[21]

Works[edit]

Editor of Critical Concepts: Translation Studies (London and New York: Routledge,
2009).

Editor of Critical Readings in Translation Studies (London and New York: Routledge,
2009).

Editor, together with Gabriela Saldanha, of Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation

Studies (London and New York: Routledge, 2008).

Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account (London and New York: Routledge,
2006).

In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation (first edition, 1992, Routledge; upcoming

revised and extended edition, 2010).

Susan Bassnett
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Susan Bassnett (born 1945) is a translation theorist and scholar of comparative literature. She
served as pro-vice-chancellor at the University of Warwick for ten years and taught in its Centre
for Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies, which closed in 2009. Educated around
Europe, she began her career in Italy and has lectured at universities in the United States prior to
the University of Warwick where she is currently professor of comparative literature.[1]
Clive Barker, Bassnett's long-term partner and a theatre studies academic at Warwick, died in
2005.[2] In 2007, she was elected a Fellow at the Royal Society of Literature.[3]

Contents
[hide]

1 Notable works

2 Critical ideas
o 2.1 Foregrounding translation
o 2.2 Comparative literature as a literary strategy

3 References

4 External links

Notable works[edit]
Among her more than twenty books, several have become mainstays in the field of literary
criticism, especially Translation Studies (1980) and Comparative Literature (1993). A book on
Ted Hughes was published in 2009. Another interesting book edited by Bassnett is Knives and
Angels: Women Writers in Latin America.[4] Bassnett's collaboration with several intellectuals in a
series of book projects have been received well. In 2006, she co-edited with Peter Bush the book
The Translator as Writer. In addition to her scholarly works, Bassnett writes poetry which was
published as Exchanging Lives: Poems and Translations (2002).

Critical ideas[edit]
Foregrounding translation[edit]
In her 1998 work Constructing Cultures: Essays on Literary Translation (written with Andr
Lefevere), Bassnett states that "the shift of emphasis from original to translation is reflected in
discussions on the visibility of the translator. Lawrence Venuti calls for a translator-centered
translation, insisting that the translator should inscribe him/herself visibly into the text".[5]

Comparative literature as a literary strategy[edit]

In a 2006 essay titled Reflections on Comparative Literature in the Twenty-First Century, she
engaged with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak who argues in Death of a Discipline (2003) that the
field of comparative literature must move beyond its eurocentrism if it is to stay relevant. While
she agrees with Spivak that eurocentrism has marginalised literatures from the non-West, she
also argues that Spivak's argument puts comparatists from Europe, who are familiar with its
literatures, in a precarious position. To Bassnett, the way out for European comparatists is to
critically investigate their past. Bassnett also recanted her previous stance that comparative
literature is a dying subject that will slowly be replaced by translation studies. Rather, she argues
that comparative literature and translation theory continue to be relevant today if taken as modes
of reading that literary critics can use to approach texts.

References[edit]

1.

Jump up ^ Susan Bassnett faculty page at the University of Warwick

2.

Jump up ^ Baz Kershaw Obituary: Clive Barker, The Guardian, 19 April 2005

3.

Jump up ^ Bassnett at RSL

4.
5.

Jump up ^ Knives and Angels: Women Writers in Latin America. Ed. Susan Bassnett.
London: Zed Books, 1990.
Jump up ^ Constructing Cultures: Essays on Literary Translation