1

Ideology and Translation

with a concluding point on translation teaching

By Behrouz Karoubi
University Lecturer at Islamic Azad University, Arak, Iran
behrouz_karoubi@hotmail.com

www.translationdirectory.com/article233.htm

For years translations were considered as derivatives, copies, and translators as

mechanical devices replacing linguistic codes (equivalents) from one language
into another, and the translator's autonomy was always questioned (and is still
being questioned) by those who thought of him/her ‘as a monkey, with no choice
save to make the same grimaces as his master’ (Leppihalme, 1997: 19), until
recent years when, under the influence of poststructuralism and functionalism,
the focus of attention has been shifted to the issue of translator’s agency and
subjectivity, and the notions of originality and (absolute) equivalence and also
author’s superiority over translator have been severely questioned. Bassnett
(1996) stresses the need for reassessing the role of the translator by analyzing
his/her intervention in the process of linguistic transfer, when she argues ‘Once
considered a subservient, transparent filter through which a text could and should
pass without adulteration, the translation can now be seen as a process in which
intervention is crucial’ (p. 22). Awareness of complexity of translation process
and avoidance of the simplistic view of regarding translation as mere process of
transferring words from one text to another, Álvarez & Vidal (1996) claim, will
result in realizing the importance of the ideology underlying a translation. They
argue that behind every one of the translator’s selections, as what to add, what
to leave out, which words to choose and how to place them, ‘there is a voluntary
act that reveals his history and the socio-political milieu that surrounds him; in
other words, his own culture [and ideology]’. (Álvarez & Vidal, 1996: 5).

The exercise of ideology in translation is as old as the history of translation itself.

According to Fawcett (1998), ‘throughout the centuries, individuals and
institutions applied their particular beliefs to the production of certain effect in
translation’ (p. 107). He claims that ‘an ideological approach to translation can be
found in some of the earliest examples of translation known to us’ (p. 106).
Nevertheless, the linguistics-oriented approaches to translation studies have
failed to address the concept of ideology through years of their prevalence,
because such approaches are limited to their scientific models for research and
the empirical data they collect, so that ‘they remain reluctant to take into account
the social values [and ideologies] that enter into translating as well as the study
of it’ (Venuti, 1998a: 1). The deficiency of old linguistics-based approaches –
which ‘are mainly descriptive studies focusing on textual forms’ (Calzada-Pérez,
2003: 8) – in accounting for social values in translation and other aspects of
language use resulted in developing a new trend of research called Critical
Discourse Analysis (CDA) ‘whose primary aim is to expose the ideological forces
that underlie communicative exchanges [like translating]’ (Calzada-Pérez, 2003:
2). According to CDA advocates, all language use, including translation, is
ideological and this means that translation is always a site for ideological
 2

encounters (p. 2). Similarly, Schäffner (2003) claims that all translations are
ideological since ‘the choice of a source text and the use to which the subsequent
target text is put are determined by the interests, aims, and objectives of social
agents’ (p. 23). She evidently opts for van Dijk’s definition for ideology as ‘basic
systems of shared social representations that may control more specific group
beliefs’ (van Dijk, 1996: 7). However, there are a profusion of diverse definitions
of ideology defining the term from different perspectives – amongst them is van
Dijk’s definition – some of which are deemed necessary to be overviewed here.

Definitions of ideology

The term ‘ideology’ has been always accompanied by its political connotation as it
is evident in its dictionary definition as ‘a system of ideas and ideals, especially
one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy’ (The New
Oxford Dictionary of English). Translation scholars who slant in favor of the
political definitions of ideology mainly believe that translating itself is a political
act as Tahir-Gürçağlar (2003: 113) argues, ‘Translation is political because, both
as activity and product, it displays process of negotiation among different agents.
On micro-level, these agents are translators, authors, critics, publishers, editors,
and readers’. Under the influence of Marx who defines ideology as action without
knowledge (false consciousness), ideology is sometimes defined in its negative
political sense as ‘a system of wrong, false, distorted or otherwise misguided
beliefs’ (van Dijk, qtd in Calzada-Pérez, 2003: 3). In its more constructive sense,
Marxists like Lenin define Socialist ideology as ‘a force that encourages
revolutionary consciousness and fosters progress’ (Calzada-Pérez, 2003: 4).
According to Calzada-Pérez (ibid.), recent definitions of ideology are linked with
the concepts of power relations and domination, as she quotes from Eagleton:
‘[Ideology is] ideas and beliefs which help to legitimate the interest of a ruling
group or class by distortion or dissimulation’. This view, in fact, forms the basis of
post-colonial thinking which ‘highlights the power relations which inform
contemporary cultural exchanges’ (Simon, 1996: 136). However, Calzada-Pérez
(2003) argues that sometimes ideology is viewed in more positive sense ‘as a
vehicle to promote or legitimate interests of a particular social group (rather than
a means to destroy contenders)’ (p. 5).

Scholars in the field of language-related, cultural and translation studies,

however, often tend to extend the concept of ideology beyond political sphere
and define it in a rather politically neutralized sense as ‘a set of ideas, which
organize our lives and help us understand the relation to our environment’
(Calzada-Pérez, 2003: 5). In most parts of the current paper, nevertheless, the
writer opts for the definition proposed by van Dijk (1996: 7) for ideology as a
framework that is ‘assumed to specifically organize and monitor one form of
socially shared mental representation, in other words, the organized evaluative
beliefs—traditionally called 'attitudes'—shared by social groups’.

Position of ideology

The ideology of translation could be traced in both process and product of

translation which are, however, closely interdependent. The ideology of a
translation, according to Tymoczko (2003), will be a combination of the content
of the source text and the various speech acts represented in the source text
relevant to the source context, layered together with the representation of the
content, its relevance to the receptor audience, and the various speech acts of
the translation itself addressing the target context, as well as resonance and
discrepancies between these two ‘utterances’. However, she further explains that
‘the ideology of translation resides not simply in the text translated, but in the
 3

voicing and stance of the translator, and in its relevance to the receiving
audience’ (pp. 182–83). Schäffner (2003) explains:

Ideological aspect can […] be determined within a text itself, both at the lexical
level (reflected, for example, in the deliberate choice or avoidance of a particular
word […]) and the grammatical level (for example, use of passive structures to
avoid an expression of agency). Ideological aspects can be more or less obvious
in texts, depending on the topic of a text, its genre and communicative purposes.
(p. 23)

Ideological aspects can also be examined in the process of text production

(translating) and the role of the translator as a target text producer as well as a
source text interpreter. These aspects along with two major influencing schools of
post-structuralism and functionalism will be further explained in details in the
following paragraphs.

Ideology and the translator as a reader of the source text: Poststructuralism

According to Venuti (1992: 6), poststructuralist thinkers like Derrida and de Man,
mainly under the influence of Benjamin’s works, explode the binary opposition
between original and translation which causes translators to be invisible. Before
the emergence of poststructuralism, structuralists like Saussure, defined
language as the scientifically examinable world of symbols constituting the
linguistic system and social structure within which the individual is socially
shaped. The structuralists believed that ‘language is constructed as a system of
signs, each sign being the result of conventional relation between word and
meaning, between a signifier (a sound or sound-image) and a signified (the
referent, or concept represented by the signifier)’ (Roman, 2002: 309). Later,
Barthes, an early poststructuralist, claimed that ‘signifiers and singnifieds are not
fixed, unchangeable, but, on the contrary, can make the sign itself signifying
more complex mythical signs as intricate signifiers of the order of myth’ (Roman,
2002: 310). This shift of idea from structuralism toward poststructuralism
resulted in extreme revisions in different domains of language, for example,
developing of ‘the death of author’ thinking which later found its way into
Translation Studies. From instability of the signifiers and signifieds, Barthes
concludes that reading texts in terms of authorial intention or what we think the
author meant by such and such a statement, and referring the source of meaning
and authority of a text back to its author (as the creator of that text) is no more
acceptable (Royle, 2003: 7). Barthes argues that ‘since writers only write within a
system of language in which particularized authors are born and shaped, texts
cannot be thought of in terms of their author’s intentions, but only in relationship
with other texts: in intertextuality’ (Roman, 2002: 311). In the absence of the
author, Barthes explains, the readers (a translator could be one of them)
interpret texts by setting them against their backdrop of known words and
phrases, existing statements, familiar conventions, anterior texts, or, in other
words, their general knowledge which is ideological; and the meaning of a text
becomes what individual readers extract from it, not what a supreme Author put
in. (Hermans, 1999: 69) ‘ “The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the
death of the Author”, Barthes bravely declares’ (ibid).

Derrida, another poststructuralist, draws attention from the signifieds to the chain
of signifiers, as Roman (2002) explains:

Derrida takes the structure of sign from Saussure, but transforms it into a fluid
entity, whereby meaning and writing consist solely in signifiers. Signifiers refer
only to each other and meaning becomes unstable since any deferral to yet
 4

another signifier implies a difference in an endless chain of signification. This is

the meaning of the French term différence (from the French verb différer, with its
polysemantics of to differ and to delay), or Différance, a neologism created by
Derrida particularly to express the indeterminacy of meaning. (p. 311)

According to Venuti (1992), poststructuralist thinkers believe that the original is

itself a translation, an incomplete process of translating a signifying chain into
univocal signified, and this process is both displayed and further complicated
when it is translated by another signifying chain in a different language. The
originality of the foreign text is thus compromised by the poststructuralist concept
of textuality. Neither the foreign nor the translation is an original semantic unity;
both are derivative, consisting of diverse linguistic and cultural materials, making
meaning plural and differential (p. 7). In the same way, neither the author nor
the translator as a reader of source text possesses the authorial power to
definitely determine the meaning; and the ‘authority’ will always remain collective
due to endless circle of signification.

Poststructuralist textuality redefines the notion of equivalence in translation by

assuming from the outset that the differential plurality in every text precludes a
simple correspondence of meaning, and a ratio of loss and gain inextricably
occurs during translation process (Venuti, 1992: 7–8). Similarly, Carbonell (1996)
points out that, since the nature of the context of signification in both the source
and target cultures is heterogeneous, meaning changes unavoidably in the
process of translation and there will be always possibility of contradiction between
the author’s intentions and the translator’s (p. 98).

But why have such relativism and perspectivism result not in a state of
complete anarchy and unintelligibility? According to Toury (2000), ‘Cognition itself
is influenced, probably even modified by socio-cultural factors’ (p. 119). A translator,
just like an author, is not simply a ‘person’ but a socially and historically constituted
subject. As mentioned earlier, translators interpret texts by setting them against their
backdrop of known words and phrases, existing statements, familiar conventions,
anterior texts, or, in other words, their general knowledge which is ideological. This
knowledge allows them to interpret the text and at the same time limits the range of
their interpretation as Robinson aptly notices:

Translators […] are those people who let their knowledge govern their behavior. And that
knowledge is ideological. It is controlled by ideological norms. If you want to become a
translator you must submit to the translator’s submissive role, submit to being possessed by
what ideological norms inform you. (qtd. in Calzada-Pérez, 2003: 7)

What brings de facto the individual interpretations close together is the

likeness of the intertextual and ideological configurations the individuals are located
in. Translators are hardly (maybe never) aware of ideological factors governing their
process of the source text interpretation

Toury (1999: 18) admits the difficulties of determining the role of socio-
cultural factors which unconsciously affect the translator’s behavior:

One thing I would not venture to do […] is tackle the intriguing question of how, and to
what extent, the environment affects the workings of the brain, or how the cognitive is
influenced by the socio-cultural, even though this would surely make an invaluable
contribution to our understanding of translation.
 5

Nevertheless, sometimes it becomes extremely difficult for a translation

scholar to justify whether the ideological discrepancies observed between the source
text and the target text are results of the translator’s subconscious ideological
interpretation or of his/her intentional ideological intervention which will be discussed
in the following paragraphs.

Ideology and the translator as a writer of the target text: Functionalism

While one of the pivotal achievements of the poststructuralist approaches is

dethroning the author and his/her authorial intention by emphasizing the role of the
translator as an autonomous reader of the source text, functionalist approaches try to
dethrone the source text itself by emphasizing the role of the translator as a creator of
the target text and giving priority to purpose (skopos) of producing target text.

According to Schäffner (1996), ‘Functionalist approach is a kind of cover term

for the research of scholars who argue that the purpose of the TT is the most
important criterion in any translation’ (p. 2). Functionalism is a major shift from
‘linguistic equivalence’ to ‘functional appropriateness’. From the perspective of
functional approaches to translation (particularly, under the influence of Holz-
Mänttäri’s theory of ‘translational action’), translation is viewed as a communicative
act. In this view, translation is conceived primarily ‘as a process of intercultural
communication, whose end product is a text which is capable of functioning
appropriately in specific situations and context of use’ (Schäffner, 1998a: 3).

The principles of translational (translatorial) action theory then founded the

basis of Vermeer’s Skopos theory. ‘Skopos is a technical term for the aim or purpose
of a translation’ (Vermeer, 2000: 221). Skopostheorists assert that any action has an
aim, a purpose. From their standpoint, translation is considered not as a process of
transcoding (the position usually adopted by earlier non-functionalist approaches), but
as a form of human action which has its own purpose basically decided on by the
translator (Schäffner, 1998b: 235; Hönig, 1998: 9). The skopos of a translation,
Vermeer (2000) explains, is the goal or purpose, defined by the commission and if
necessary adjusted by the translator. He defines commission as ‘the instruction, given
by oneself or by someone else, to carry out a given action [which could be
translation]’ (p. 229).

A text in skopostheorist approach is regarded as an offer of information from

its producer to a recipient. Translation is then a secondary offer of information about
information originally offered in another language within another culture (Schäffner,
1998b: 236). The translator, as an expert in translational action, must interpret ST
information ‘by selecting those features which most closely correspond to the
requirements of the target situation (Shuttleworth & Cowie, 1997: 156). From this
point of view, the translation process is not (necessarily) determined retrospectively
by the source text, its effects on its addressees, or the intention of its author, but
prospectively by the skopos of the target text as determined by the target recipient’s
requirements (which are, however, discerned and decided on by the translator himself/
herself). The translation then is ‘the production of a functionally appropriate target
text based on an existing source text [or what Neubert calls ‘source-text induced
target-text production’], and the relationship between the two texts is specified
according to the skopos of the translation’ (Schäffner, 1998b: 236).
 6

Focusing on the purpose of translation as the most decisive factor in

translation action, skopos theory emphasizes the role of the translator as an expert in
translational action and regards the source text no longer as the ‘sacred original’ from
which the skopos (purpose) of the translation is deduced, but as a mere offer of
information whose role in the action is to be decided by the translator, depending on
the expectations and needs of the target readers (Hönig, 1998: 9). Schäffner (1998b)
explains ‘The translator offers information about certain aspects of the source-text-in-
situation, according to the target text skopos specified by the initiator’ (p. 236).
Skopos theory and functionalism focus on the translator, giving him/her more freedom
and at the same time more responsibility, as Hönig (1998) asserts:

[The translator] may be held responsible for the result of his/her translational acts by
recipients and clients. In order to act responsibly, however, translators must be allowed the
freedom to decide in co-operation with their clients what is in their best interests. (p. 10)

An awareness of the requirements of the skopos, Vermeer maintains, ‘expands

the possibilities of translation, increases the range of possible translation strategies,
and releases the translator from the corset of an enforced – and hence often
meaningless – literalness’ (qtd. in Shuttleworth & Cowie, 1997: 156). The translator
thus becomes a target-text author freed from the ‘limitations and restrictions imposed
by a narrowly defined concept of loyalty to the source text alone’ (Schäffner, 1998b:
238).

Hönig (1998: 14) usefully contrasts the characteristics of functional

approaches vs. non-functional approaches as follows:

FUNCTIONALIST NON-
FUNCTIONALIST
Translator
Is loyal to his client Faithful to the author
Must be visible Should be invisible
Translation processes
should be
Target text oriented Source text oriented
Aim of translation is
Communicative Linguistic equivalence
acceptability
Translation tools taken from
Psycho-, sociolinguistics, Contrastive linguistics

text linguistics lexical semantics

(supporting decisions) (applying rules)

Analogy
Building bridge Crossing river
 7

According to Toury (2000), norms themselves actually are not observable. He

declares that what are actually available for observation are rather norm-governed
instances of behavior or the products of such behavior (p. 206). Toury introduces two
major sources for reconstruction of translational norms:

1. Textual: the translated text themselves, for all kinds of norms, as well
as analytical inventories of translation (i.e., ‘virtual texts’), for various
preliminary norms;

2. Extratextual: semi-theoretical or critical formulations, such as

perspective ‘theories’ of translation, statements made by translators,
editors, publishers, and other persons involved in or connected with the
activity, critical appraisals of individual translations, or the activity of a
translator or ‘school’ of translators, and so forth. (Toury, 2000: 207)

Likewise, Baker (1998) introduces studying of a ‘corpus of authentic

translations’ as a means for identifying regular instances of translational behavior
which are represented in that corpus by the translator, and, thus, for identifying the
translational norms (p. 164).

Concluding Point

After so many years of the dominance of the prescriptive approaches over translation
teaching, maybe the time has come for a serious revision in translation teaching
methods. Translation teaching should no longer be seen as a set of rules and
instructions prescribed by translation teachers to the students as to what strategies will
lead to a ‘good’ or ‘correct’ translation and what to a ‘wrong’ and ‘incorrect’ one.
Understanding the importance of decision-making in translation, the translation
teachers should try to describe the actual translational decisions made by actual
translators under different socio-cultural and ideological settings in real life and real
situations, and explain the perlocutionary consequences resulted from adoption of
such decisions for the students. They should allow the students to select voluntarily
between different options they have at hand, reminding them that they will be
responsible for the selections they make. Translation teachers should make it clear for
the students that every translation has its own aim determined by its translator, and
that they could freely choose the options that best serve their intended aim of
translation.

References

Álvarez, R. & Vidal, M.C. (1996).Translating: A political act. In R. Álvarez & M. C.

Vidal (Ed.) Translation, power, subversion (pp. 1-9). Philadelphia: Multilingual
Matters.

Baker,M. (1998). Norms. In M. Baker (Ed.) Routledge encyclopedia of translation

studies (pp. 163-165). London: Routledge

Bassnett, S. (1996). The meek or the mighty: Reappraising the role of the
translator. In R. Álvarez & M. C. Vidal (Ed.) Translation, power, subversion (pp.
10-24). Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters.
 8

Calzada-Pérez, M. (2003). Introduction. In M. Calzada-Pérez (Ed.) Apropos of

ideology (pp. 1-22). Manchester: St. Jerome.

Carbonell, O. (1996).The exotic space of cultural translation. In R. Álvarez & M.

C. Vidal (Ed.) Translation, power, subversion (pp. 79-98). Philadelphia:
Multilingual Matters.

Fawcett, P. (1998). Ideology and translation. In M. Baker (Ed.) Routledge

encyclopedia of translation studies (pp. 106-111). London: Routledge.

Hermans, T. (1999). Translation and normativity. In C. Schäffner (Ed.)

Translation and norms (pp. 50-71). Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters.

__________(1985) The Manipulation of Literature: Studies in Literary

Translation. London/Sydney: Croom Helm.

Hönig, H. G. (1998). Positions, power and practice: Functionalist approaches and

translation quality assessment. In C. Schäffner (Ed.) Translation and quality (pp.
6-34). Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters.

Leppihalme, R. (1997). Culture bumps: An empirical approach to the translation

of allusions. Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters.

Nord, C. (2003). Function and loyalty in Bible translation. In M. Calzada-Pérez

(Ed.) Apropos of ideology (pp. 89-112). Manchester: St. Jerome.

Roman, D. (2002). Poststructuralism. In V. Taylor & C. Winquist (Ed.)

Encyclopedia of postmodernism (pp. 308-10). London: Routledge.

Royle, N. (2003). Jacques Derrida. London: Routledge.

Schäffner, C. (2003). Third ways and new centres: Ideological unity or

difference? In M. Calzada-Pérez (Ed.) Apropos of ideology (pp. 23-42).
Manchester: St. Jerome.

__________ (1999). The concept of norms in translation studies. In C. Schäffner

(Ed.) Translation and norms (pp. 1-9). Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters.

__________ (1998a). Action (Theory of translatorial action). In M. Baker (Ed.)

Routledge encyclopedia of translation studies (pp. 3-5). London: Routledge.

__________ (1998b). Skopos theory. In M. Baker (Ed.) Routledge encyclopedia

of translation studies (pp. 235-38). London: Routledge.

__________ (1996).From 'good' to 'functionally appropriate': Assessing

translation quality. In C. Schäffner (Ed.) Translation and quality (pp. 1-6).
Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters.

Shuttleworth, M. & Cowie, M. (1997). Dictionary of translation studies.

Manchester: St. Jerome.

Tahir-Gürçağlar, Ş. (2003). The translation bureau revisited: Translation as

symbol. In M. Calzada-Pérez (Ed.) Apropos of ideology (pp. 113-130).
Manchester: St. Jerome.
 9

Toury, G. (2000). The nature and role of norms in translation. In L. Venuti (Ed.)
The translation studies reader (pp. 198-211). London: Routledge.

__________ (1999). A handful of paragraphs on 'translation' and 'norms'. In C.

Schäffner (Ed.) Translation and norms (pp. 9-31). Philadelphia: Multilingual
Matters.

__________ (1995). Descriptive translation studies and beyond. Amsterdam:

John Benjamins.

Tymoczko, M. (2003). Ideology and the position of the translator: In what Sense
is a translator ‘in between’? In M. Calzada-Pérez (Ed.) Apropos of ideology (pp.
181-202). Manchester: St. Jerome.

van Dijk, T. A. (1996). Discourse, opinions and ideologies. In C. Schäffner & H.

Kelly-Holmes (Ed.) Discourse and ideologies (pp. 7-37). Philadelphia: Multilingual
Matters.

Venuti, L. (1998a). The scandals of translation: Towards an ethics of difference.

London: Routledge.

__________ (1998b). Strategies of translation. In M. Baker (Ed.) Routledge

encyclopedia of translation studies (pp. 240-244). London: Routledge

__________ (1992). Introduction. In L. Venuti (Ed.) Rethinking translation:

Discourse, subjectivity, ideology (pp. 1-17). London: Routledge.

Vermeer, H. J. (2000). Skopos and commission in translational action (A.

Chesterman, Trans.). In L. Venuti (Ed.) The translation studies reader (pp. 221-
32). London: Routledge.