22 Audience Design in Translating Reiss, Katharina and Hans Vermeer (1984) Grundiegung einer allgemeiner Translationstheorie, Tubingen: Niemeyer. ‘Schiffiner, Christina (1998) “Skopos Theory’, in Mona Baker (ed) Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, London: Routledge, 235-38. Sell, R. (1991) Literary Pragmatics, London: Routledge. Sperber, Dan and Deirdre Wilson (1986) Relevance. Communication and Cog- nition, Oxford: Blackwell ‘Thompson, G. and P. Thetela (1995) ‘The Sound of One Hand Clapping: the Management of Interaction in Written Discourse’, Text 15(1): 103-127. ‘Toury, Gideon (1995) Descriptive Translation Studies ~ and Beyond, Amster- dam: John Benjamins ‘Venuti, Lawrence (1995) The Translator’s Invisibility, London: Routledge. (1998) The Scandals of Translation. Towards an Ethics of Difference, London: Routledge. ‘Vermeer, Hans (1996) A Skopos Theory of Translation, Heidelberg: TextconText Verlag, The Translator. Volume 6, Number | (2000), 23-47 Translation and Political Engagement Activism, Social Change and the Role of Translation in Geopolitical Shifts MARIA TYMOCZKO. University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA Abstract. The possibility of using translation for geopolitical ‘agenda and political engagement has stimulated substantial interest in the last decade within translation studies and in other disciplines. Defining engagement in translation studies as translation with an ‘activist component, this article reviews the discourse pertaining to translation and engagement. The case study of the translation of Irish erature into English over the last century, from the epoch of Irish cultural nationalism through Irish political independence 10 the present, is used as an exemplar of a translation movement that has been effective in achieving significant geopolitical results Desiderata for a theory of translation and engagement are discussed, inthe context of which a criticism is offered of Venuti’s contribution to the discourse of translation and engagement. The article concludes with the identification of characteristics shared by translation movements that have effectively contributed to political engagement and geopolitical change. In Culture and Imperialism Edward Said has argued that narratives create “structures of feeling’ that support, elaborate and consolidate the practice ‘of empire” (1993:14); at the same time his work documents the resistance and alternate structures of feeling created within dominated cultures to coun- ter the practices of empire, resistance that erupted in the 20th century in nationalist movements all over the world. Such resistance gradually won in- ‘dependence for the colonized, bringing to an end the practices of direct colonial rule, Just as dominant cultures have created images of the past to bolster their practices of power in the present (cf. Said 1993:15ff.), so have colonized cultures created visions of the past to further ideological resistance and po- litical programmes (cf. Fanon 1961/1963). Although such images of the past like those of the colonizers ~ are manipulations of the past, often simplified or essentialized or even fetishized structures, they are powerful means of drawing together oppressed peoples and giving them a consciousness of their ‘own potential for self-determination.24 Translation and Political Engagement in translations of narratives which involve the creation and recreation of structures of feeling. Translation plays this role within a colonial or neocolonial setting whenever it participates in the formation of cultural constructions, negotiating views of a people’s past or present as it bridges gaps caused by linguistic change or a multilinguistic potity. It is, therefore, not simply the translation of narratives that is at issue here, but the translation of any central cultural documents, including laws, annals or other historical materials ‘Translations are inevitably partial; meaning in a text is overdetermined, and the information in and meaning ofa source text is therefore always more extensive than a translation can convey. Conversely, the receptor language and culture entail obligatory features that limit the possibilities ofthe transla- tion, as well as extending the meanings of the translation in directions other than those inherent in the source text (cf. Tymoczko 1999:ch. 1 and sources cited). As a result, translators must make choices, selecting aspects ot parts of a text to transpose and emphasize. Such choices in turn serve to create representations of their source texts, representations that are also partial. This partiality is not merely a defect, a lack, or an absence in a translation ~ itis also an aspect that makes the act of translation partisan: engaged and com- mitted, either implicitly or explicitly. Indeed partiality is what differentiates translations of the same or similar works, making them flexible and diverse, ‘enabling them to participate in the dialectic of power, the ongoing process of political discourse, and strategies for social change. Such representations and commitments are apparent from analyses of translators’ choices word-by- word, page-by-page, and text-by-text, and they are also often demonstrable in the paratextual materials that surround translations, including introduc- tions, footnotes, reviews, literary criticism and so forth. The very words associated with politics and ideology emphasized here suggest the nexus of metonymy and engagement in the activity of translation, indicating that the partial nature of translations is what makes them also political. 1. A brief survey of the theme of engagement in recent writing on translation Considerations such as the foregoing have fed the excitement in recent years about translation as a possible vehicle of political engagement, engagement that is not restricted to postcolonial contexts, and this interest is to a large extent identified with the work of Lawrence Venuti (1992, 1995, 19982, 1998b). Venuti’s work in turn looks back to that of Philip Lewis (1985), Jacques Derrida (1985) and Walter Benjamin (1923), to name but three im- portant figures standing behind Venut’s arguments. Within translation studies others have also taken up this line of thought ~ Susan Bassnett (1992, 1993), Maria Tymoczko 25 ‘working outside translation studies, similar voicings are heard from Tejaswini Niranjana (1992), Eric Cheyfitz (1991), Vicente Rafael (1993), Gayatri Spi- vvack (1992), Homi Bhabha (1994) and James Clifford (1997), among others. ‘The harnassing of translation for political and ideological purposes is not original to these critics and theoreticians of translation, nor is it original to the present age. We see the impulse earlier among our own contemporaries in the work of actual translators, including Brazilian translators, with their theories of cannibalism in the service of autonomous cultural development and extension (see Vieira 1994), Québécois translators can also be seen in this light and are often discussed as such, particularly feminist Canadian trans- lators like Barbard Godard (1990) and Suzanne de Lotbinitre-Harwood (1991), as well as the earlier Québécois playwrights, whose translations and work have been so well analyzed by Annie Brisset (1990). Indeed a long history of translation in the service of ideological agendas, antedating the present, has been demonstrated and analyzed by Venuti, notably in The Trans- lator’s Invisibiity (1995). Other types of translation besides literary translation must also be seen in this context, and Venuti’s accounts should be supplemented in this regard. Bible translations, for example, particularly in the medieval and early Ren- aissance period, have this character of ideological engagement, for literacy, access to the biblical text and lay movements of piety were direct challenges to the power structures of medieval and early modern society. Thus, Bible translation at the period is paradoxically a prime illustration of the relation- ship between translation and resistance to oppressive cultural conditions, indicating the relationship between translation and social change, and cal translation was for several centuries theorized as such in writings contemporary with the early vernacular translations of the Bible. It was for these reasons, as much as for doctrinal ones, that many of the early move- ‘ments sponsoring Bible translation were persecuted in their day and that Bible translators themselves were even on occasion burnt at the stake. In these diverse cases taken from the history of translation in the West during the last millenium, which could be multiplied in any thorough survey of translation worldwide through history, translation intersects in demonstrable ways with efforts to change power structures. 2. Engagement defined Before proceeding, I'd like to clarify what I mean by translation and engage- ment. I'm not simply discussing the ethos or ideological orientation of a translation and a translator — the salutoriness or correctness of a translator's politics, or a quality in a translation that promotes good attitudes and good26 Translation and Political Engagement that most translators undertake the work they do because they believe the texts they produce will benefit humanity or impact positively upon the receptor culture in ways that are broadly ideological. This is true equally of literary translators who select texts to translate, translators of technical manuals, and Bible translators. Lam even interested here in something alittle more active than the stance of writers who promoted litérature engagée in the post-War period. I'm pri- marily concerned with translation as a sort of speech act: translation that rouses, inspires, witnesses, mobilizes, incites to rebellion, and so forth. Such ‘anslations actin the world and have an activist aspect. The subject, then, is translation that has illocutionary and perlocutionary dimensions, that actu- ally participates in social movements, that is effective in the world at achieving demonstrable social and political change. Clearly in pursuing such questions, the context of and audience for such translation are central issues, and I would agree with Douglas Robinson (1997:112) who argues that an important test of atranslation’s political effectiveness is its ability o reach mass audiences. In part I take this topic as my subject matter because the effectiveness of literature that simply aims at attitudinal shifts is much more difficult to as- sess. Attitudinal shifts are notoriously problematic to correlate with social change, and they are also conspicuously volatile and subject to reversals or ironic finales. Itis a particularly questionable business to argue for the trans- formative value of changing the attitudes of a small avant-garde after a century filled with the repression, suppression and even extermination of cultural elites. From the annihilation of intellectuals in the Nazi death camps to Chi- na’s Cultural Revolution, from the neutralization of leftists during the MoCarthy period in the United States to the massacres ofthe educated classes in African countries emerging from colonialism, we have learned that such hopes are often sadly misplaced: pogroms and purges of the left occurred on virtually every continent in the last century, wiping away progress associ- ated with attitudinal shifts. The approach to engagement presupposed in this paper isin fact consist- cent with basic definitions of engagement as “the state of being engaged”. In tum, engaged is defined as “contracted for, pledged”, “betrothed” and, more to the point for our purposes here, “involved in conflict or battle” (American Heritage Dictionary). It might be argued that it is sufficient for literature (and translation, by extension) to be involved in ideological conflict ot bat- tle, but such a view of engagement almost inevitably restricts the impact of such engagement to cultural elites, the difficulties of which have already been touched upon. As should already be obvious, I am also concerned in this paper not only with translations that demonstrate engagement on the object level, but also Maria Tymoczko 7 tors theorize their own work, theorizations produce translation strategies and even actual translations. Thus, any discussion of translation and engagement rust of necessity look at both, 3. An Irish case study: a touchstone for postcolonial translation theories and questions of engagement in translation Postcolonial approaches to translation are clearly central to the concerns and interests we are tracing. Following from descriptive approaches to transla- tion, developed by Itamar Even-Zohar (1978, 1990), Gideon Toury (1980, 1982, 1991, 1995), André Lefevere (1982a, 1982b, 1992) and others, postcolonial translation studies take up questions about the interrelation of translation, power, ideology and politics. The development ofthese approaches to translation has been aptly summarized by Robinson (1997), where he at- tempts to delineate the broad field of postcolonial translation studies and to situate within it the work of Niranjana, Cheyfitz and Rafael, relating this movement to the work of Venuti and others as well. Robinson (1997:6) iden- tifies what he has called the “narrative or utopian myth of postcolonial translation studies”, a trajectory deriving from Frantz Fanon (1961/1963:178- 79), among others, in which colonized cultures are seen as moving from a colonized stage in which colonial values are introjected, toa stage in which an independent identity begins to emerge but is constrained by opposition to the colonizers’ values, to a third stage of decolonization in which truly au- tonomous perspectives can develop. Despite the excitement generated among scholars by postcolonial ap- proaches to translation, however, in the context of his critique of Niranjana, Robinson (ibid:esp. 109-110, ef. 88-93, 104-113) notes the slim achievements, in either translation theory or practice among those using postcolonial ap- proaches to the field, Moreover, he observes (ibid:78) that the issues raised by postcolonial translation theory are “so gargantuan ..., so enormous and complicated and thoroughly steeped in the social and political histories of cultures and civilizations spanning vast tracts of time and space”, that it is difficult to move beyond gross generalizations in postcolonial approaches to translation studies. In Translation in a Postcolonial Context (1999) I have suggested that localism ~ the study of particular translation movements located in the con- text of specific nations with their specific political contexts and specific histories offers a means of moving beyond generalizations and of achiev- ing sufficient specificity so that both translation studies and postcolonial studies can profit from the study of translation in postcolonial contexts. In the book I then proceed to analyze one of the most interesting case studies of28 Translation and Political Engagement Irish cultural nationalism, through the formation of the Irish state, and on into the later 20th century as well. Ihave focused on the translation of medi- eval Irish heroic narratives, narratives which were harassed in constructing and redirecting popular structures of feeling, moving Ireland away from a colonized consciousness to resistance and then to decolonization. Transla- tion of early Irish texts, including translation of early Irish laws, annals and other cultural documents, was central to the emergence of Irish cultural na- tionalism ~ essential to the ability of the Irish to claim a history and culture for themselves, for example, and the attempt to construct an identity for them- selves that would free them from the English definitions of Irishness, definitions that at this distance are as malign as the most vicious colonial projections (see Tymoczko 1999:ch. 2). Translation of Irish literature per se ‘was a cornerstone of the Irish literary revival, which was the seedbed of a great deal of Irish cultural nationalism in the period 1890-1916. Irish cultural nationalism in tur facilitated Irish political organization and, ultimately, Irish armed rebellion against Britain, a pivotal factor in the emergence of the Irish state and the end of colonial rule in most of Ireland. Ireland is a small country, but its struggle for independence sent shock waves through the whole British Empire, rocking the foundations of imperium, establishing paradigms of textuality and action that inspired the rest of the colonized world. In 1914 Lenin had predicted that a blow against the British Empire in Ireland would be of “a hundred times more significance than a ‘blow of equal weight in Asia or in Africa’ (quoted in Kiberd 1995:197), and so it came to pass. The Irish drive for independence was watched and emu- lated by nationalist movements in India, Egypt and elsewhere, with tokens of solidarity being exchanged and advice sought ofthe Irish by other colonized countries, The British authorities saw the direction history was taking as early as 1919, and cabinet minutes reveal the fears that “if the Irish case were conceded, the flames of revolt would be fanned in India and elsewhere”; England would lose the empire and deserve to lose it. Marx had been accu- rate in foreseeing that Ireland was imperial England’s weakest point, that ‘with Ireland lost the British Empire would be gone.? The history of the trans- lation of early Irish literature into English, therefore, is the history of a translation practice that fired up Ireland, an entire country, an important coun- try, albeit a small one. The translation movement was central to the Irish cultural revival, and from the Irish revival grew the political and military struggle that won freedom from England, When we perceive resistance to colonialism encoded in translations of early Irish literature as leading to en- gagement between Ireland and Britain, then the translation movement investigated in my work must be understood as having contributed notably to shaping the world all of us live in today. It was a translation practice that Maria Tymoczko 29 in the transformation of the hero Cai Chulainn. In the early Irish texts, al- though he is the son of a mortal woman and the god Lug, Cii Chulainn is also alouse-tidden youth, whose battle-rages cause him to become distorted and grotesque, a danger to friend and foe alike. He guards the border of his teri- tory (Ulster), but leaves his post for a tryst with a woman — in pursuit of a woman's backside, as he puts it (of. Kinsella 1969:133) - thus allowing en- emies to invade Ulster during the action narrated in the tale called Tein BS Citaitnge (literally, ‘the driving off of the cows of Céailnge’). Ci Chulainn is ultimately killed by trickery and magic, after he insists on fighting when @ strategic response would have demanded caution and refusal of battle. ‘The patriotic translators at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th eliminate almost all of this. Gone are the lice, the grotesque distortion, the woman’s backside, the dereliction of duty, the prodigal death. ‘Though Ca Chulainn’s supernatural birth is retained, the hero himself is decorous and noble, fighting against odds, and he dies in a scenario that nationalists saw as reminiscent ofthe Christian crucifixion, Because the Ulster Cycle in English translation and adaptation was subsumed within the framework of a heroic biography of Ci Chulainn, the stories could be integrated into a coherent pattern which worked to counter the depersonal- ization that colonized peoples suffer under colonialism,’ fostering instead self-confidence and heroic models of resistance to oppression. Céi Chulainn, ~ particularly as he was pictured in translations of Tdin Bd Ciiailnge ~ came to epitomize the ideal of militant Irish heroism, which thus became a personalized concept, rather than an abstract one. The paradigm permitted nationalist identification with a hero of the most militant and uncompromising, sort, and it glorified both individualism and action on behalf ofthe tribe. The ‘ajectory these translations set tothe Easter Rising of 1916 was a literal one, not merely figurative, for Cé Chulainn was a personal model for Patrick Pearse, one of the leaders of the Rising. ‘At the turn of the century, the story of Ci Chulainn was refracted in plays, (including those of W. B. Yeats) and pageants, poetry and children’s litera- ture, Images of him were produced by artists for high culture arenas and popular culture alike. A mural of Cé Chulainn taking arms stood in the en- trance hall of St. Enda’s, the boys’ school which Patrick Pearse directed for some years, and its motto, “I care not though I were to live but one day and cone night provided my fame and my deeds live after me”, provided the ethos for the children. Pearse had as a stated goal the desire to have the boys model themselves on Ci Chulainn (cf. Tymoczko 1999:80). This heroic representa- tion of Cd Chulainn continues to play a role in Irish cultural life, embodied in Oliver Sheppard's statue of Ci Chulainn memorializing the Easter Rising, a statue that stands in the General Post Office in Dublin.30. Translation and Political Engagement Kinsella in The Tain, 2 1969 translation of a number of the early Irish heroic tales. Kinsella transposed and even heightened the comic, earthy and sexual aspects ofthe texts, as well as Ci Chulainn’s anti-heroic and grotesque quali- ties, challenging the nationalist tradition of noble Irish heroism. He translated in part to contest and subvert the pieties of Irish nationalism which had hard- ened into a repressive cultural ambience and a regressive politics. This demythotogized and modernized Cé Chulainn is the image picked up and popularized by the Irish rock group Horselips in their record The Tain (1973). ‘After the beginning of the troubles in Northern Ireland in 1968, the story of Cui Chulainn was enlisted once again for ideological purposes, figuring in Norther Ireland in murals painted by both Catholic and Protestant partisans engaged in a politics of violence and terror (cf. Rolston 1995:17, 21, 28). Most recently, a representation of Cé Chulainn has been included in the vid- cos that play atthe visitors’ centre at Emain Macha, a major archaeological site in Norther Ireland. These videos inculcate a patriotic consciousness about the Irish Gaelic heritage of Ulster, and themselves take a partisan position in the dialogue about Irish identity in Northern Ireland. In this sequence, which has been treated here in summary fashion, we find both interlinguistic translation and intersemiotic translation intertwin- ing, shaping in various complex ways the evolution of Irish political life. I've focused on the manipulations of the contents of the early manuscripts in their English translations, but in my extended treatment ofthis topic (Tymocz- ko 1999), I discuss in detail the translational representations of Irish literary form, Irish genres, Irish names, Irish cultural concepts and world views, and so forth, illustrating the ideological implications of all these facets of the translations in multiple versions spanning more than a century. The transla- tion history of early Irish literature into English parallels the decolonization of Ireland, and it stands as a prototype of translation as an activist enterprise with tangible geopolitical results. In a variety of ways the Irish case also confirms the utopian narrative of postcolonial studies ~ the movement from colonization, through a dialectical opposition to the colonizer, toward decolonization and cultural autonomy. There is an increasing assertion of native Irish culture in many respects in the translations, from the content of traditional Trish myths to material culture to literary form. This case study provides actual examples of translation correlated with political action, social change and engagement that are quite different from the effects that Venuti and others only theorize about or enjoin. It contrasts notably with the translation activity of such literary figures as Ezra Pound, whose writings are not correlated with tangible political movements or re- sults. Ironically, moreover, however radical Pound's poetics, his political ‘views led him down the path of fascism, which makes him a somewhat prob- Maria Tymoccko aI sible, but cannot herself realize. The Irish translations both nuance postcolonial translation theory as itis emerging and also show why Niranjana has so litle to offer practically — because the cultural interface of translating in a postcolonial context is so enormously complicated, so inherently difficult and so context specific, that results cannot be simply delivered whole cloth by a single translator at a single moment or indeed by any single approach to translation. The Irish translation movement can be considered traduction engagée, that is, it has ideological orientation, but itis also engaged in the sense of “involved in conflict or battle”, often in all too literal and graphic ways, as we see in the numerous cases of armed Irish partisans who have invoked Ci Chulainn on the way to combat. |. Desiderata for a theoretical perspective on translation and engagement In order to understand the potential of translation for activism and political engagement, we need at least three things. First we need to have a theoretical approach to power. There has been a discourse about power and translation for some decades now, but until recently that discourse has been fairly muted. Many of the poinis about power and translation made by recent theorists ‘were anticipated by Even-Zohar in both his 1978 and his 1990 publications formulating a polysystems approach to translation, but Even-Zohar's frame- ‘work is difficult to use if one is interested in power and political engagement, because he masks issues related to both with his rather sanitized vocabulary. Itis difficult to tease out the geopolitical implications of centre and periph- ery, cultural prestige and so forth in his presentation of the issues (cf. Lambert 1995, Robinson 1997b:31, 39). Although Even-Zohar acknowledges that there are power differentials between cultures, the cases he considers are of a dif- ferent order of magnitude from the power differentials that colonialized countries struggle with or that exist in contemporary geopolitical contexts. Moreover, some of his theoretical language — “high” vs. “low”, for example — is today distasteful, offensive and unacceptable. It is perhaps for reasons such as these that Niranjana is dismissive of Lefevere and the other polysystems translation theorists. ‘Approaches pertaining to power and translation began to be more sharply focused when translation studies took “the cultural turn”, approximately & decade ago, and translation scholars began to privilege questions of cultural context and cultural function, as well as ideology and purpose, in descriptive studies of translations. These issues were also foregrounded when transla- tion began to be theorized with poststructuralist approaches, showing how translation is a site of cultural production, a product of cultural discourses,32 Translation and Political Engagement With postcolonial theories of translation, however, the discourse about translation and power reached a qualitatively new level. In part postcolonial theory has been attractive to literary studies as a whole because it is one of the few viable contemporary theoretical or critical approaches that actually deals overtly and concretely with oppression and cultural coercion, issues that command so much intellectual attention at present. In a climate where literary studies has been dominated by poststructuralist voices, such an ap- proach is welcome to many, providing as it does an exit from the textualized world of French criticism and a return to practical experience, particularly ‘when that practical experience can make compelling appeals for engagement and action, as can the situation of peoples struggling with disadvantaged po- sitions, the residue of colonialism and neocolonial contexts worldwide. Postcolonial approaches unpack Even-Zohar’s ideas about centre and periph- ery in both concrete and theoretical terms pertaining to power. Moreover, they suggest strategies that have worked in cultural domains other than trans- lation for contesting power structures; such strategies and techniques offer the promise of being able to be learned and adapted by translators. The need for such an analytic framework has been especially acute in the last decade, since the erosion of Marxism after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Circumstances that could formerly be referred to or explained in terms of economic considerations and Marxist theory are not so easily resolved in scholarly circles at present. For reasons such as these, many diverse writers have fastened on postcolonial theory, at tines extending its insights in rather fuzzy ways. They have developed dilute applications of postcolonial theory for various groups that have not actually been colonized; such approaches presuppose that colo- nization can be seen as a sort of ontological condition, rather than reflecting specific historical, economic and cultural configurations. This happens in part because, as I suggested above, postcolonial theory is currently one of the few viable theoretical approaches that addresses directly the geopolitical shifts and problems of power that dominated the 20th century. Its, in addi- tion, one of the few discourses pertaining to power that has sustained itself since Marxism has fallen out of favour and been widely abandoned in aca- demic circles; indeed postcolonial theory has recuperated many Marxist perspectives. As a result postcolonial theory has appealed to and been taken up by many diverse groups, groups that W. E. B. Du Bois might have re- ferred to collectively as “imprisoned” peoples (1903/1989:34), from feminists to those subject to neocolonial economic manipulations. It should be obvious from my comments that I do not see postcoloniality as an ontological category, but rather as a complex set of circumstances re- sponding to specific historical conditions associated with the European age Maria Tymoczko 33 of power in their specific spatio-temporal contexts, paying attention to dif- ferences as well as similarities. In fact attention to the specifics of history ‘and context has become increasingly the norm in literary studies, and trans- lation studies would do well to follow suit. Thus, itis important to distinguish struggles pertaining to power relevant to those who have been colonized per se from struggles pertinent to others suffering oppression for other reasons, just as within postcolonial studies itis important to differentiate the specific manifestations of colonialism experienced by the several peoples who have been colonized. In order to do so, however, it will be helpful to have a more articulated theorization of power as it pertains to translation, A second requirement for understanding the relation between translation and political engagement is an adequate range of case studies to serve as data for investigation, comparison and contrast. Here the prospect is brighter, for the work is well underway and has achieved excellent results with respect to many situations, providing the basis for conclusions about translation and engagement. Thus, for example, with respect to postcolonial contexts there are important contributions about Egypt and North Africa in Venuti (1992), specifically the contributions of Richard Jacquemond and Samia Mehrez Rafael (1993) has written about translation in relation to the colonization of the Philippines, and Cheyfitz (1991) has considered the role of translation in the colonization of the Americas. Studies of translation and colonization re- lated to India include the work of Niranjana (1992) and Spivack (1992), of course, but also studies by Sengupta (1990, 1995) and Mukherjee (1994). An carly study by Simms (1983) deals with cases in Pacific cultures. My own studies, as well as those of Lloyd (1982, 1987) and Cronin (1996), illuminate aspects of translation and political engagement in Ireland. Finally, Robinson (1997:ch, 3) has looked at the historical relations of empire and translation. There are collections of such studies, including the recent one edited by Bas- snett and Trivedi (1998), and more such appear virtually every year. There are, in addition, cases studies which deal with political and ideo- logical engagement in a broader sense: with power in its diverse manifestations throughout history and the nature of oppression and dominance more gener- ally. Despite the muted terminology, a number of polysystems studies fall in this category (Hermans 1985; Lefevere and Jackson 1982). The same is true of many of Venuti’s contributions in The Translator’s Invisibility and The Scandals of Translation, as well as Venus special issue of The Translator (19986) entitled Translation and Minority. Many of the studies on transla- tion in Brazil can also be read in this light (cf. Vieira 1994). Similarly, an impressive literature has developed about Québec, including contributions by de Lotbiniére-Harwood (1991), Simon (1994) and Brisset (1990), among, others. There is, as well, a growing body of studies on the role of language, literature and translation among the Spanish-speaking population of the United34 Translation and Political Engagement Translation and Power, as well as in the papers presented at a conference by the same ttle held at the University of Warwick in 1997. The result of allthis ‘work is that there is already available a large number of case studies that can serve as the evidentiary basis for both theoretical studies and empirical con- clusions alike regarding translation and political engagement. Third, in order to relate translation to political engagement, we need theo- retical concepts and practical methods that can be used to describe what makes specific examples of engaged translation effective, as well as to analyse the translation techniques that lead to political engagement. To date, the major tools of analysis proposed for these purposes are the cluster of related con- cepts and terms offered by Venuti. In his various works he speaks of abusive Jidelity, foreignizing vs. domesticating translation, fluent vs. resistant transla- tion (or fluency and resistancy), and most recently minoritizing translation. It is worth examining these concepts, as well as their usefulness, in some detail 5. Venuti’s contribution to the discourse on translation and engagement Although Venuti has developed an impressive number of terms ostensibly useful for analysing aspects of translation related to engagement, power and politics, he does not carefully define any of them. This is in part because the concepts he develops and the terms he uses are not strictly speaking his own invention. We can trace the pedigree of abusive fidelity, for example, to Philip Lewis's concept of traduction abusive (Lewis 1985). The distinction between Soreignizing and domesticating translations is based on earlier conceptualiza- tions of domestication that have been formulated outside translation theory and used broadly in literary criticism. And resistance, which is atthe root of Venuti’s concept of resistant translation or resistancy, is a word with very wide political and ideological associations, evoking, for example, la Résisi- ance, the French name for the opposition movement to the Nazis during World ‘War IL Finally, Venuti’s most recent term, minoritizing translation, goes back to the concept of a minor literature developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, while his discussion of the remainder in translation is based upon the work of Jean-Jacques Lecercle (Venuti 1995:216-200, 1998a). It is telfing that Venuti uses a number of terms rather than employing a unified terminology: it allows him to shift ground and alter the basis of his argument as it suits him, without committing himself to the particularities, difficulties and implications of any one term, any one concept, or any one distinction that he is working with, Moreover, his shifting terminology is deployed in part to avoid defining his terms with any particularity or specificity ‘of meaning, and it permits him to sidestep defending or justifying his terms as needed. Venuti is able, consequently, to evade accountability for logical Maria Tymoczko 35 ‘Venuti has essentially abandoned his former terms, tacitly acknowledging the weaknesses of the earlier terminology and his inability to defend it or even to deploy it in useful theoretical ways. ‘A further problem we can point to in Venuti’s work is that his style of argument is very informal, indeed even at times lax (cf. Pym 1996). He tends to assert things rather than argue for them or present evidence for them. Thus, for example, he claims that fluency is the dominant standard for translations in the United States at present, but offers little evidence of that claim, except for his own experience, experience which is based primarily on the transla- tion of nineteenth- and twentieth-century literary works between European languages. By contrast, in translation domains with which Tam most familiar = namely the translation of languages that are not globalized and the transla- tion of languages from former times, fluency is most decidedly not the norm. Indeed it goes very much against the grain to offer literary or even reader- friendly translations in such fields, because philological standards have generally remained dominant in most language transfer involving minority languages and the languages of non-Westemnized cultures as well. My con~ tention here is not to dispute one of Venuti’s major points ~ that dominant English-speaking culture tends to colonize the cultural products of other cul- tures. In fact, philological translations colonize texts by taking literary texts, for example, and turning them into non-literary texts, all in the name of accu- racy, as Thave argued in detail elsewhere (Tymoczko 1999:ch, 9), What should be observed, however, is that cultural dominance results in translations with deformed textual and cultural representation that serves the interests of the dominant receptor culture. Such deformation is not necessarily to be associ- ated with a single type of translation method, such as fluency. Rather, any translation procedure can become a tool of cultural colonization, even foreignizing translation.’ T would suggest that Venuti’s shifting terminology in conjunction with his loose style of argument makes it difficult to use his concepts or to extend his arguments. This is in striking contrast to the concepts and arguments of, say, Eugene Nida (1964), Even-Zohar (1978, 1990) or Toury (1980, 1995), whose theories of translation are in many ways seriously flawed, yet whose concepts are almost immediately useful to and capable of extension by any new reader. ‘These problems with Venuti's work are apparent, for example, in his con- cept of resistance (1995), which, as he uses it, does not form a coherent category that allows us to replicate his conclusions or extend his perceptions. Sometimes in Venuti's work a resistant translation is a translation which in- volves what he cals “discursive strategies” that depend heavily on translating into a form of the target language that departs radically from standard norms, saa iat fe dediriemad ar ee lepethe cairo landomae36 Translation and Political Engagement however, Venuti indicates that resistant translation may be found in texts even though the discursive strategies are “fluent” that is conforming to target language norms, not foreignizing — because resistance can lie in the choice of the text itself (1995:ch. 4). In fact he writes (1995:186, cf. 148), “the choice of a foreign text for translation can be just as foreignizing in its impact on the target language culture as the invention of a discursive strategy” Perhaps one reason Venuti shifts terminology, moving between foreigni:- ing and resistant and most recently minoritizing, is because he shifts his basic ‘ground of argument as well, without explicitly acknowledging the fact and without acknowledging the problems such shifts cause in the logic of his argument. Venuti has a hard time maintaining consistent distinctions between the polar opposites he works with, a difficulty that is actually no surprise. A number of translation theorists, including myself, have argued that such bi- naries do not work very well in translation studies and that the best of binaries tend to break down; see Bassnett (1992), Tymoczko (1985, 1999:ch. 1), and sources cited. Not surprising, similar objections can be raised with respect to the binaries that Venuti proposes — whether its the binary of fluenvresistant or foreignizing/domesticating. In and of itself itis not problematic that Venuti offers no tight definition of his concepts, namely, necessary and sufficient conditions for a translation to be resistant or foreignizing. Not all concepts or categories can be defined by criteria that identify all members of the set, excluding none, Typically cluster concepts, for example, cannot be so defined — such concepts are very common and include the concept of game, a concept investigated by Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953), one of the people who have thought most deeply about such categories. What is problematic with Venuti’s work, however, is that it is hard to see how his category of resistant translations is linked even by the types of linkages that hold together cluster categories — linkages that Wittgenstein called “family resemblances” (1953:sections 65-67). What Wit tgenstein meant by “family resemblances” isa series of partially overlapping characteristics which bind together a group, no single subset of which is char- acteristic of all members. For Venuti, however, a resistant translation can be characterized either by choice of text (rather than discursive strategy) or dis- cursive strategy (rather than choice of text) — that is, instead of articulating a cluster of family resemblances, he seems to attempt to define a category char acterized by disjuncts of various properties rather than partial overlaps. (One could respond that Venuti is defining a functional category, a cat- ‘egory formed by its purpose or function rather than by any ostensive surface characteristics. The trouble with this line of argument is that the functions picked out by Venuti’s approaches to translation are not coherent either. In fact, the functions of minoritizing or resistant or foreignizing translations are quite variable, assuming for the moment that we can pick out translations aia geet act fre eveqinte: swhefher’ Vermti te Maria Tymoczko 7 attempting to define a category associated with functional resistance to all cultural oppression. If so, how are we to distinguish situations where resist- ance to internal cultural oppression should be preferred over resistance to external cultural oppression? For example, should translators in the United ‘States exert themselves to resist external monied influences, say Japanese or ‘German investment interests? Should writers in postcolonial countries resist problems internal to their governments or cultures in picking translation strat- egies or should they focus on resistance to neocolonialism? If language is complicit with power and hegemony and if functional resistance to such lin- ‘guistic structures is to be desired in all situations, are all forms of ostranie or defamiliarization to be valued in translation? If so, how do we distinguish resistant translations from translations that are unreadable? Where in lan- ‘guage does ideological tyranny end and grammar begin? As Clifford (1997:10, ch. 6) implicitly asks, is all subversion good? There is nothing in Venuti’s definitions of his concepts or articulation of them that helps us to answer such questions. ‘What questions such as these suggest is that ultimately the recognition of Venuti's concept of resistance is less dependent on identifiable criteria or specific functions pertaining to translation than on somewhat arbitrary per- sonal judgments ~ a matter of taste, let us say — on the part of Venuti and others who use his approaches. Indeed, if Venuti’s concept of resistance is neither a formal nor a functional category, one must ask whether itis a cat- egory at all - a category that scholars can learn to recognize and apply consistently. Clearly, ifthese concepts of resistance and resistant translation — or foreignizing, ot minoritizing — are to become tools that can be widely used in translation research, they must be identifiable and applicable, and their presence must at the least be able to be detected and agreed upon by diverse researchers. They cannot depend ultimately on personal taste. IF [am right in discerning a problem here, we are faced with a real difficulty in using. Venuti’s concepts, for a sine qua non of the usefulness in research of a crti- cal tool or of critical terms is replicability and transfer, both of which seem problematic in the case of extending Venuti’s arguments. ‘We might summarize the previous objection to Venuti’s terminology by stating that he does not make it clear what precisely is to be understood by, say, resistant translation or what qualities are to be counted as resistant. Let us assume for the moment, however, that we could identify what constitutes resistance, there is still another problem with the concepts and terms pro- posed by Venuti. Of the particular qualities or functions he is interested in, Venuti does not make it clear how much would be sufficient to characterize a translation overall as being resistant or foreignizing. That is, how much re- sistance must there be ina translation for it to count as aresistant translation”? How many instances of abusive fidelity or foreignizing or minoritizing lan- conave are necessary for a translation as a whole to be counted as foreignizing,38 Translation and Political Engagement and so forth? Again, Venuti gives us no guidance and no criteria to make such a judgment, leaving it to the individual researcher to set the bar. This may sound like nitpicking, but I suggest that the problem here is suspiciously like a variant of the age-old question of whether something is really radical How radical is radical’? Who gets to decide, to make the judgement, and on what basis? And if the determination of standards is open to anyone, can this be the basis of sound theory and research? Equally problematic in this regard is the related question of how to apply these concepts to translations of previous ages and how to judge such trans- lations of the past. Thus, for example, how does the passage of time affect the quality of resistance? Once resistant, always resistant? Or is resistance related to the specific historic and cultural moment of a translation? And if the later is true, what criteria of interface with the cultural context determine resistance? Can we fault translations of the past for not being sufficiently resistant? Most people, of course, would agree that in such a case the deter- mination of resistance must be culturally specific. But if so, then we must ask what theoretical advance Venuti has made over the work of the systems theorists such as Even-Zohar, Toury or Lefevere in identifying translations and translation methods that are effective means of engagement? ‘Venuti appears to be offering criteria that can be used to judge and sort translations, to identify types of translations that lead to substantial social change, but those criteria erode into relativist uncertainty as we look at his ‘work more closely and attempt to determine how to extend his thought. He suggests that he is offering a conceptual tool for analyzing translations, a kind of absolute or universal standard of valuation, with a sort of on/off qual- ity rather than a sliding scale, but where and how the lines are to be drawn in applying his concepts are nowhere articulated for the scholarly community. Note that this objection does not obtain with respect to many other criteria used to judge, sort and distinguish translations, even binary distinctions that would take to be ultimately problematic. Thus, the criteria for determining Whether a translation is formal-equivalence or dynamic-equivalence, adequate cor acceptable, are well enough articulated and stable enough across cultures ‘so that one could look at both present and past translations and know roughly how to label them, if one were required to use those criteria (leaving aside for the moment the question of whether these labels are as useful as those who have propounded them could wish). With Venuti’s terminology, there are more acute problems. One begins to suspect that Venuti does indeed offer an absolute scale, but that itis only absolute in virtue of being unique, personal or even solipsistic with respect to Venuti himself (or whoever else might use the term) as the final sole judge and arbiter of the situation. There is an implicit suggestion in Maria Tymoccko 39. litical standards of judgment rather than standards of judgment pertaining to translation processes or produets themselves. Venuti openly acknowledges his political agenda in his writing, and I am not criticizing him for his politi cal positions per se, most of which I am sympathetic to and in fact share, nor for having a political agenda. The issue isthe Following: if we are to build up a theory and practice of translation in relation to political engagement, we must have conceptual and analytic tools for doing so, and my concern here is with evaluating and criticizing the tools Venuti has offered. His concepts are 1 version of leftist rhetoric, an application of standards of political correct- ness that turn ultimately to individuals or toa party for arbitration of political appropriateness. They are not finally very specific or germane to the particu- lar subject matter or content of translation as a cultural phenomenon. Ironically, what I am suggesting is that Venuti uses the methods of descriptive studies of translation, but ultimately his approach is a normative one, and a highly rigid and autocratic approach to norms at that, making ultimate appeal to his own view of politics rather than to the methods or contexts of translation. This is actually something that Venuti comes close to acknowledging in his most recent work.* If it s true, however, then ultimately Venuti’s methods and concepts lead us backward rather than forward in the development of translation studies, for the development of descriptive approaches as an alternative to normative approaches has been a major ‘watershed in the expansion of the contemporary academic disciplines related to translation. ‘These difficulties with Venuti’s terms underlie additional problems ob- served by others before me (see, for example, Bennett 1999, Pym 1996, Robinson 1997a:108ff., 1997b:97-112). Venuti's normative stance about foreignizing and resistant translation is highly specific in its cultural applica tion; it pertains to translation in powerful countries in the West in general nd to translation in the United States in particular. Venuti has been crit cized for not offering a theory that is transitive, that can be applied to translation in smaller countries, in countries that are at a disadvantage in hierarchies of economic and cultural prestige and power. In this sense his approach is not applicable to translation in postcolonial countries. Indeed the methods he proposes for achieving resistance would in those circumstances tead to the further erosion of cultural autonomy and power. Itis probably in part to rectify this theoretical and practical problem that Venuti has recently shifted his discussion to “minoritizing” translation, but most of the objections that I have already put forward pertain to this new critical formulation and, indeed, others have opened up.’ Moreover, Venuti’s project, whatever the terms he uses, seems to be an elitist one, and Robinson (1997), among others, has rightly questioned how useful such elitism can be in political agendas.40 Translation and Political Engagement suggest that the translator with a social conscience should attempt to benefit ‘humanity and further social justice by picking a text and a translation method that challenge dominant cultural standards, particularly those dominant stand- ards associated with imperiatism or neo-imperialism. But many translators have believed and acted upon those principles long before Venuti ever began to write. As for analysis of how those effects are achieved, the ideological elements of translations and groups of translations can be described and theo- rized just as precisely with ordinary language as with the terms that Venuti proffers. If Venuti’s writing offers us less than we need in the way of theoretical concepts and practical methods to describe and analyze the relationship be- tween translation and engagement, where does that leave us? For terminology, in addition to ordinary language, we can always return to various types of historicist analyses, including polysystems approaches. The problem here, as noted earlier, is thatthe sanitized terminology does not lend itself easily to discussions of ideology, power and engagement. We can also, of course, pur- sue the application of postcolonial theory to translation studies. In fact there are a number of concepts and terms developed by postcolonial theory that have the potential to be of great use within translation studies, including hybridity, transculturation, radical bilingualism, double writing, and so forth, but this is an approach that is still in its infancy, needing to be nuanced and more fully articulated. A third possibility for a theory and praxis of transla- tion as a form of engagement is to develop approaches to translation based ‘on deconstruction, which may offer tools as the approach is developed over the next years. What becomes clear from the analysis Ihave undertaken here, however, is the need in translation studies for both terminology and methods, of analysis appropriate to this topic, focused on and relevant to the largest geopolitical issues pertaining to translation, not just pertinent to colonized peoples or to dominant cultures, but adaptable to all political contexts and historical specificities 6. Conclusion ‘There is a time-honoured tradition of using texts for revolutionary purposes. ‘The American Revolution is a prime example of a potitical movement that used textual means for achieving its ends, and it served as a model for many other revolutions, including the Irish rebellion against Britain. Both in turn look back to the pamphlets of Jonathan Swift and other writers of the 18th century, including the writers of the French Enlightenment. Where such textualized means of engagement have been successful, however, they were almost invariably associated with a larger political project, as for example Maria Tymoccko 4 ‘As Robinson has argued (1997:108ff.), moreover, to be effective for po- litical engagement, atext and a group that uses the text must have widespread ‘and general appeal. One reason textualized means, including translation, were effective in Ireland as it struggled for freedom is that texts inciting cultural nationalism had popular appeal through the Irish literary movement, the Irish dramatic movement and the Trish movement to edit and translate early Irish texts, all of which were inclusive movements, consciously appealing to all segments of the Irish polity. Indeed the Irish cultural nationalists worked very hard at building such mass appeal, developing hundreds of local cha ters of the Gaelic League, staging popular dramatic productions, taking their productions on the road to villages and towns in the countryside, and making available inexpensive editions and translations of texts for the common reader. But such things are difficult and involve a concerted effort of literati and political leaders, sometimes even an identity of the two, as the case of the Irish patriots Eoin MacNeill, Patrick Pearse and Douglas Hyde illustrates. Growing out of my own experience as someone committed to engage- ‘ment in both radical and electoral politics during the last 40 years, as well as my experience with textual production, I personally would recommend that if a person were interested in being engaged, he or she should undertake direct action rather than sublimated textualized political involvement. Direct, action is generally more efficient and more effective, for textualized means so often have a tendency to become hermetic and displaced, not to mention uncertain in their results. And after recent history, which has demonstrated repeatedly how easily elites can be purged, wiped out, eliminated and swept aside, itis difficult to have confidence in the effectiveness of movements oriented toa literary elite. If one were nonetheless intent on using translation as a means of political engagement, the following can be suggested, based on the effectiveness of the Irish translation movement. + Fora translation movement to be effectively engaged, it needs a clear set of shared goals and values. + Political effectiveness is most likely if there is a group of translators acting in concert and if the translators as a group operate within the context of a larger cultural and political movement, which might include the production of other textual forms (theatre, literature of various types, pamphlets, speeches, manifestoes, and so on), as well as diverse forms of activism and direct community organization, + There should be a defined audience large enough to initiate and support cultural shifts, such as the integrated, popular audience in Ireland at the tum of the century. © Texte mnet he chosen for translation with nolitical nals in view and if2 Translation and Political Engagement so as to adapt and subordinate the texts to political aims and agendas. The intent to transmit the texts closely, in and for themselves, must in ‘many cases ~ perhaps even most —_be abandoned. It is important to flag this point for this type of radical manipulation of texts is usually inimical to most people whose primary orientation is to the integrity of texts per + Translators should be ingenious and varied in their approach to translation, No single translation approach or strategy is likely to suffice = whether itis literal or free, “domesticating” or “foreignizing”. Instead, as the Trish translations show, multiple strategies should be deployed and maximum tactical flexibility maintained, so as to respond to the immediate cultural context most effectively. It may even be desirable, as in the Irish case, to have multiple and complementary representations of the same set of texts. Trying to prescribe a single translation strategy is like tying o prescribe a single strategy for effective guerilla warfare ‘What is required instead is a certain opportunistic vitality that seizes upon immediate short term gains as the long-term goal remains in view. In eviewing this list itis interesting to observe that these characteristics pick ‘out other translation movements besides that of Ireland: they characterize the separatist and feminist translation movements in Québec and the cannibalists of Brazil, for example. ‘One final thought, Even when translation is effective as a means of politi- cal engagement, asin the case of Ireland at the turn of the century, it does not necessarily follow that one will fully approve of the consequences. History has a way of playing tricks on its principals. The study of translation in Ire- land offers a cautionary lesson to those revisionists in translation studies who have made calls for translation to assume a geopolitical role fostering resist- ance to oppression of various kinds. The Irish translation movement is in fact, as we have seen, a rare example of exactly what is called for: a highly successful, popular translation movement that contributed in a material way to the end of imperial domination in’ Ireland. Yet in retrospect itis clear that there are also bitter ironies to its geopolitical success. Responding to the dual pressures of colonialism and nationalism, the image of Irish culture constructed by the translations of early Irish literature portrayed the Irish as tragic, heroic, militant, noble and chaste. After independence the images or representations of the Irish built up during the period of cultural nationalism were institutionalized by the Irish state and ultimately written into the constitution. This development took the form, among other things, of granting the Catholic Church a special place in the state apparatus, of explicitly defining women’s role as homebound and associated with traditional Maria Tymoczko 4B Irish with new valorized images, but it is also clear in retrospect that those images helped to construct the stifling social mores of post-independence Ireland. The translation movement also contributed to a continuing ethos of violence, albeit violence held in check for some decades. Thus the image of the Irish constructed in large measure by translations of early Irish literature was the foundation of many of the reactionary features of Irish culture from the 1920s right to the 1970s. ‘The image of Irish culture formulated in translations of early Irish litera- ture also became a sort of cultural prison, restricting cultural change and the emergence of a fully decolonized perception of Ireland’s cultural heritage. Paradoxically the images created by the translation movement came to con- strain the process of translation itself, resulting in the suppression of further translations of Irish literature for almost 50 years.* Another way of putting this point isto say that translations of early Irish literature facilitated cultural nationalism and the independence movement, but they also resulted in a rigid, petrified, and even fetishized image of Irish culture and Irish tradition that persisted for decades after independence. The emphasis on heroism and vio- lence in the early translations, moreover, contributed to the violent conflicts in Northern Ireland, with Cé Chulainn being appropriated as an ideal image by both sides in the hostilities. Thus, the Irish translation movement led not simply to Trish political independence, but also to a regressive, repressive state, to civil war and to violence in the North, an angry harvest that could not have been foreseen by the Unionist Standish O” Grady, the scholar Eleanor Hull, the Gaelic Leaguer Mary Hutton, or the sometime revolutionary Lady ‘Augusta Gregory as they prepared their translations of the early stories. The ‘moral is, be careful what you wish for. The good news about translation and political engagement is that it is protean, with the potential to change and change again the representations it creates. Because there can be no final translation, translation itself may offer solutions tothe problems it creates and repair the damages it causes.” This is the motivation behind Niranjana’s call for retranslation and her observation that retranslation and the rewriting of history are one. We can add that the rewriting of the past through and in association with translation is also a rescripting of the present and the future. Because of the necessity of renew- ing translations, translation is a cultural function that ultimately resists the fetishizing of cultural objects and cultural constructs — including the fetishizing of a national tradition. Translation acts to counter the petrification of images of the past, of readings of culture and tradition. Thus, translation is also po- tentially a perpetual locus of political engagement. MARIA TYMOCZKO_“ ‘Translation and Political Engagement Notes 1. For other criticisms of the “filter-down theory” of cultural practices, see Pym (1996:166-67).. 2. On these points see Kiberd (1995:255, 275-76). 3. The depersonalization under colonialism is discussed by Fanon (1961/1963, 1952/[1968); cf. Mills (1997:1 1348). 4. These issues are discussed at greater length in the introduction to Tymoczko and Gentzler, Translation and Power, in preparation. 5, Jacquemond (1992) illustrates the way that exoticization can reinforce cul- tural oppression; of, examples in Bennett (1999) as well. 6. See Venuti (1998:ch. 1). Venuti rather disingenuously suggests that de- scriptive approaches to translation primarily restrict their purview to norms, avoiding questions of ideology. 7. For example, most of the language used in a translation will inevitably be shaped by majority speech —thus, even in a“minoritizing” translation, won't the power of the majority continue to work most powerfully? And more significantly: can one produce a minoritizing translation if one is not part of a minority? "To set the problems of Venuti’s concept of resistance in relief, we can ‘compare it to Doris Summer's (1992) concept of resistance in literary writ- ing, Sommer gives a definition that allows the reader to understand her concept clearly, to apply her concept and to replicate and extend her find= ings. Moreover, the criteria she puts forth are textual ones rather than criteria that refer to extra-textual aspects of ideological affiliation, even though her eriteria define an ideological position for a text. Finally, her concept is transitive, able to refer to the functioning of texts with respect to both dom nant and subaltern cultures, useful no matter what the political context. In these various respects, then, Sommer’s concept is much more durable and useful as an intellectual tool than the concepts developed by Venuti. 8. There is a stark record of zero translation of many of the early texts for decades after independence. 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