Translation and ideology

Lecture 3
Lesson
• Definitions of ideology
• Translation as mediation or intervention
• Triggering of explicit and implicit values
• Domestication / Foreignization
• Feminist translation studies
• Postcolonial translation studies

Translation and ideology 2

Definitions of Ideology
• a) the process of production of meanings, signs and value in social life;
• b) a body of ideas characteristic of a particular social group or class;
• c) ideas which help to legitimate a dominant political power;
• d) false ideas which help to legitimate a dominant political power;
• e) systematically distorted communication;
• f) that which offers a position for a subject;
• g) forms of thought motivated by social interests;
• h) identity thinking

Translation and ideology 3

Definitions of ideology
• i) socially necessary illusion;
• j) the conjuncture of discourse and power;
• k) the medium in which conscious social actors make sense of their world;
• l) action-oriented sets of beliefs;
• m) the confusion of linguistic and phenomenal reality;
• n) semiotic closure;
• o) the indispensable medium in which individuals live out their relation to a social
structure;
• p) the process whereby said life is converted to a natural reality.
• T. Eagleton, Ideology (1991)
Definition of ideology
• Comte Destutt de Tracy (1796): ‘idéologie’ movement - new
rationalist ‘science of ideas’ (Enlightenment)
• Suppressed by Napoleon in 1803

Translation and ideology 5

Napoleon
• It is to the doctrine of the ideologues — to this diffuse metaphysics, which in a
contrived manner seeks to find the primary causes and on this foundation would
erect the legislation of peoples, instead of adapting the laws to a knowledge of
the human heart and of the lessons of history — to which one must attribute all
the misfortunes which have befallen our beautiful France.
• Napoleon

Translation and ideology 6

Ideology (Marx)
• Marx, in his preface to A contribution to the Critique of Political Economy:
• ‘The distinction should always be made between the material transformation of
the economic conditions of production ... and the legal, political, religious,
aesthetic or philosophic – in short, ideological – forms in which men become
conscious of this conflict and fight it out’.

Translation and ideology 7

Ideology (Engels)
• ‘Ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously indeed
but with a false consciousness. The real motives impelling him remain unknown
to him, otherwise it would not be an ideological process at all. Hence he imagines
false or apparent motives. Because it is a process of thought he derives both its
form and its content from pure thought, either his own or his predecessors’.
• Friedrich Engels, Letter to Mehring (1893)

Translation and ideology 8

Zizek
• ‘The most elementary definition of ideology is probably the well-known phrase
from Marx’s Capital: ‘Sie wissen das nicht, aber sie tun es —‘they do not know it,
but they are doing it’. The very concept of ideology implies a kind of basic,
constitutive naïveté: the misrecognition of its own presuppositions, of its own
effective conditions, a distance, a divergence between so-called social reality and
our distorted representation, our false consciousness of it’.
• Slavoj Žižek, "Cynicism as a Form of Ideology"[from The Sublime Object of Ideology (London; New York: Verso, 1989), pp.
28-30.]

Translation and ideology 9

Ideologies and truth
• ‘Few of “us” (in the West or elsewhere) describe our own belief
systems or convictions as “ideologies”. On the contrary, Ours is the
Truth, Theirs is the Ideology”’.
• Teun Van Dijk, Ideology: a multidisciplinary approach (1998), 2.

Translation and ideology 10

Ideology of translations
• ‘The ideology of a translation resides not simply in the text translated, but in the
voicing and stance of the translator, and in its relevance to the receiving
audience. These latter features are affected by the place of enunciation of the
translator: indeed they are part of what we mean by the “place” of enunciation,
for that “place” is an ideological positioning as well as a geographical or temporal
one’
• Maria Tymoczko, ‘Ideology and the position of the translator’, in Maria Calzada Perez, ed.,
Apropos of ideology (2003)

Translation and ideology 11

Ideology and language
• ‘The link between language and ideology is central. Critical linguistics
considers that language ‘reproduces’ ideology and the asymmetrical
power relations that exist between writer and reader’.
• Jeremy Munday, ‘Translation and ideology’, The Translator (2007)

Translation and ideology 12

Ideology in translation
• ‘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’.
• Christina Schäffner, “Third Ways and New Centres: Ideological Unity or Difference?” in Apropos of Ideology, ed. María Calzada-Pérez
(Manchester: St. Jerome, 2003), 23.

Translation and ideology 13

Ideology and politics in translation
• ‘The evaluation realized by the naming of controversial key figures in a
very polarized press can be very crude. An outstanding case is the
treatment of the Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez in the United States. A
search of the archive of the conservative Geopolitical Review reveals a
range of naming, from the more neutral Venezuela’s leftist leader Hugo
Chavez (14 March 2005), to the disrespectful scare quotes of Venezuelan
“President” Hugo Chavez (17 January 2005), to the negative connotation
(in a modern US context) of Venezuela’s communist/socialist leader Hugo
Chavez (31 May 2005), to the undisguised attack of Venezuela despot
Hugo Chavez (24 June 2005)’
• Jeremy Munday, ‘Translation and ideology’, The Translator (2007)

Translation and ideology 14

Ideology and other terms
‘[A]rguably, even the most doggedly neutral social-scientific uses of
‘ideology’ are tinged with disapprobation, the truly neutral stance
more often encoded by the choice of other labels such as culture,
worldview, belief, mentalité, and so on’.
• - Kathryn Woolard, ‘Language Ideology as a Field of Inquiry’, in Bambi B. Schieffelin, Kathryn A. Woolard and Paul V. Kroskrity (eds), Language Ideologies: Practice
and Theory (1998), p. 8.

Translation and ideology 15

Ideology and worldview
‘deriv[ing] from the taken-for-granted assumptions, beliefs and value-
systems which are shared collectively by social groups .... mediated
[through] powerful political and social institutions like the
government, the law and the medical profession’

Paul Simpson (1993: 5) Language, Ideology and Point of View, London and New York: Routledge.

Translation and ideology 16

Ideology (Lefevere)
• ‘the conceptual grid that consists of opinions and attitudes deemed
acceptable in a certain society at a certain time and through which
readers and translators approach text’.
• Andre Lefevere, Constructing cultures (1998), p. 48.

Translation and ideology 17

Ideology v. culture
• ‘Is all human activity ideologically motivated? When is something
‘ideology’ rather than just ‘culture’, and what is the difference
between the two?’
• P. Fawcett and J. Munday, ‘Ideology’, Encyclopedia of Translation Studies

Translation and ideology 18

Ideological position
• ‘Since we are always required when translating to take a position
relative to other cultures and languages, we must as well remain ever
vigilant as to the nature of the position assumed’.
- Penrod, Lynn K. (1993) ‘Translating Hélène Cixous: French Feminism(s) and
AngloAmerican Feminist Theory’, TTR 6(2): 39–54.

Translation and ideology 19

Translation and religious ideology
• ‘The practice of translation was for a long time, and in some cases
remains, deeply implicated in religious ideology’ (Munday)
• William Tyndale, Etienne Dolet
• Rushdie’s Satanic Verses (1988)

Translation and ideology 20

William Tyndale, 1494-1536
• English scholar whose translation of the Bible was the first to be
published in England
• Convicted of heresy and treason
• He was strangled and burned at the stake, on orders of Henry VIII

Translation and ideology 21

Etienne Dolet, 1509-1546
• ‘First martyr of the Renaissance’
• Translated the New Testament
• Condemned by the theological faculty of the Sorbonne, tortured, and
burned at the stake.

Translation and ideology 22

Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (1988)
• Hitoshi Igarashi, Rushdie's Japanese translator, was stabbed to death
• Ettore Capriolo, the Italian translator, seriously injured in another knife attack
• William Nygaard, the publisher in Norway, was shot and injured
• Aziz Nesin, the Turkish translator, was the target of a massacre in Turkey that left
37 dead in an arson attack on a hotel.

Translation and ideology 23

Ideology (Baker)
• ‘As well as (and perhaps even more so than) the textual practices of
translation, ideology reveals itself in recontextualization, the use of
paratextual devices such as prefaces and other material which frame
the text’, and in the policy choices of those who control the
publication process (Baker)

Translation and ideology 24

Paratexts (Genette)
• Peritexts
• Titles, subtitles, pseudonyms, forewords, dedications, prefaces, epilogues,
cover and blurb
• Epitext
• Marketing and promotional material, book reviews

Translation and ideology 25

Ideological manipulation
• ‘In the most obvious cases of ideological manipulation, there
is a concerted policy: thus, in Germany from 1933 to 1945
there was a clear ideology behind the selection of texts, with
a high number of Scandinavian and Flemish/Dutch texts
translated because of the feeling of kinship the Nazis
considered they shared with the German Volk’ (Munday)

Translation and ideology 26

What is your own ideology?
• What are your assumptions, beliefs, and value-systems?
• Religion, socio-economic class, race, nationality, language, gender,
sexuality

Translation and ideology 27

Translation as a form of ‘mediation’ or
‘intervention’

“…the extent to which translators [or interpreters] intervene in the

transfer process, feeding their own knowledge and beliefs into
their processing of a text”

Basil Hatim and Ian Mason (1997: 147) The Translator as Communicator , London and New
York: Routledge

Translation and ideology 28

In what ways is the translator ‘invisible’?
• Where is the translator’s name?
• Is there the translator’s name
• Does he/she own the copyright?

Translation and ideology 29

Domestication and foreignization
• The terms ‘domestication’ and ‘foreignization’ indicate fundamentally ethical
attitudes towards a foreign text and culture, ethical effects produced by the
choice of a text for translation and by the strategy devised to translate it, whereas
the terms like ‘fluency’ and ‘resistancy’ indicate fundamentally discursive features
of translation strategies in relation to the reader’s cognitive processing’.
• L. Venuti, 2008, p. 19

Translation and ideology 30

Venuti
• ‘A translator can not only choose a foreign text that is marginal in the target-
language culture, but translate it with a canonical discourse (e.g. transparency).
Or a translator can choose a foreign text that is canonical in the target-language
culture, but translate it with a marginal discourse (e.g. archaism). In this
foreignizing practice of translation, the value of a foreign text or a discursive
strategy is contingent on the cultural situation in which the translation is made’.
• L. Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility, 310.

Translation and ideology 31

Invisibility of translation
• 1) invisibility of translator [e.g., no traces of translator in fluent
translations]
• 2) invisibility of translator [e.g., omission of translator’s name, etc]
• 3) invisibility of translation in target cultures
Fluency
‘A translated text, whether prose or poetry, fiction or non fiction, is
judged acceptable by most publishers, reviewers, and readers when it
reads fluently, when the absence of any linguistic or stylistic
peculiarities makes it seem transparent, giving the appearance that it
reflects the foreign writer’s personality or intention or the essential
meaning of the foreign text – the appearance, in other words, that the
translation is not in fact a translation, but the “original”.’
- Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility, 1.
Fluency
• ‘The more fluent the translation, the more invisible the translator,
and, presumably, the more visible the writer or meaning of the
foreign text’.
• Venuti, 2.
Fluent translations
• Reviewers of translations constantly note ‘fluency’, ‘naturalness’.
• A ‘fluent’ translation is ‘modern’ (not ‘archaic); ‘widely used’;
‘standard’ (not colloquial); no foreign words; no switching between
American and British idioms
The regime of fluent translating
• ‘Under the regime of fluent translating, the translator works to make
his or her work “invisible”, producing the illusory effect o
transparency that simultaneously masks its status as an illusion: the
translated tet seems ‘natural’, i.e., not translated’.
• Venuti, 5.
Translator’s invisibility
• ‘The translator’s invisibility is thus a weird self-annihilation that
undoubtedly reinforces its marginal status in Anglo-American culture’.
• Venuti, 8.
Domestication and foreignization

Ethical level Domestication Foreignization

(conforming to (valuing the foreign)
target culture
values)

Discursive level Fluency Resistancy

(‘transparent’ (‘resistant’ reading,
reading, assimilated challenging TL
to TL norms) norms)

Translation and ideology 38

Features of ‘foreignization’
• Close adherence to source text structure and syntax (with abundant
calques)
• Mixture of archaisms and colloquialisms
• Use of different language varieties (e.g., American and British English)

Translation and ideology 39

(Re)naming
• Terrorist or freedom-fighter?
• Peking > Beijing
• Bombay > Mumbai
• Montreal or Montréal?
• Londonderry or Derry?
• Malvinas or Falklands?
• Ayer’s Rock or Uluru?
• Serbo-Croat > Serbian/Croatian

Translation and ideology 40

北京 (Beijing / Peking)
• A question of transliteration
• Peking was the name used by Western missionaries starting four
centuries ago
• Beijing was the official pinyin name post-WW2
• Very important for those who are not Chinese – but this difference is
not noticed by native Chinese speakers on a day to day basis

Translation and ideology 41

Bombay v. Mumbai
• ‘When did Bombay become Mumbai?
• Officially, in 1995. That year, the right-wing Hindu nationalist party
Shiv Sena won elections in the state of Maharashtra and presided
over a coalition that took control of the state assembly. After the
election, the party announced that the port city had been renamed
after the Hindu goddess Mumbadevi, the city's patron deity. Federal
agencies, local businesses, and newspapers were ordered to adopt
the change’
• Christopher Beam, Slate Magazine

Translation and ideology 42

Montreal or Montréal
• ‘According to Section 63 of Quebec's French Language Charter, the
name of a business must be in French. But it hasn't generally been
applied to trademarked names’
• ‘Some companies have taken steps to change their name — like
Kentucky Fried Chicken, which is known in Quebec as "Poulet Frit
Kentucky.” But others, like Walmart and Best Buy, have set up shop
under the same name that appears elsewhere in the world’ (cbc.ca)

Translation and ideology 43

Londonderry v. Derry
• Derry (nationalists); Londonderry (unionists)
• The Guardian: ‘use Derry and Co Derry’
• The Times: ‘Londonderry, but Derry City Council’
• BBC: ‘The BBC’s policy is to refer it as Londonderry the first time it is
mentioned and Derry the second’

Translation and ideology 44

Malvinas or Falklands
• ‘Argentina says it has a right to the islands, which it calls the Malvinas, because it
inherited them from the Spanish crown in the early 1800s. It has also based its
claim on the islands' proximity to the South American mainland’
• ‘Britain rests its case on its long-term administration of the Falklands and on the
principle of self-determination for the islanders, who are almost all of British
descent’
• Bbc.co.uk

Translation and ideology 45

• The local Pitjantjatjara people call the landmark Uluṟu
• In 1873, the surveyor William Gosse named it Ayers Rock in honour of
the then Chief Secretary of South Australia, Sir Henry Ayers

Translation and ideology 46

Serbo-Croatian
• Commonly referred to languages spoken in the former Yugoslavia
• Now often distinguished: Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Montenegrin

Translation and ideology 47

Explicit expression of value

London is cosmopolitan, trendy and exciting,

a truly wonderful place to visit. The city
combines old-fashioned charm and cutting-
edge fashion. Quiet courtesy and a great
deal of fun.
(TimeOut/HSBC Miniguide to London)

Translation and ideology 48

Implicit expression of value

All of these characteristics will be revealed as

you wander from museum to gallery, down
Victorian arcades and busy streets, across
vast parks and along cobbled streets. The
contrasts are endless: next to every historical
sight, there’s a skyscraper gleaming with the
wealth of modern life. Discovering these
contrasts is one of the city’s great pleasures.
(TimeOut/HSBC Miniguide to London)
Translation and ideology 49
Translation depends on languages sharing similar
cultural values…

The concept of old

• old Masters (grandi maestri)

• antique art (arte antiquariato)
• fine art (belle arti)

• oude Kunst = old Masters, old art, ancient art, fine art

Translation and ideology 50

Problems of implicit value

- in non-core vocabulary and metaphor

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West,
endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard
earth

- in allusions
For us, they fought and died... in places like Concord
and Gettysburg, Normandy and Khe Sanh. 

Translation and ideology 51

Sweatshops

Translation and ideology 52

Settled the West

Translation and ideology 53

Concord...

Translation and ideology 54

Truth status of translation
‘The essence of translation’s ideological intervention is that the selections
made during the translation process (not only by the translator but by all
those involved, including those who decide the choice of texts to
translate) are potentially determined by ideologically-based strategies
governed by those who wield power. These can be uncovered by
analysing the various target text selections that impact on the target text
reader who, nevertheless, generally and crucially reads the text as though
it were a transparent, unmediated rendering of the original, more or less
unaware (or at least willingly suspending the knowledge) that it is a
translated text. The perceived truth status of the words of the TT may
only be uncovered if ST and TT and their paratextual framings are
compared side by side, even if the motivation for any shifts may remain
open to conjecture.’ Fawcett & Munday, ‘Ideology’
Translation and ideology 55
Anne Frank
• ‘There is no greater enmity in the world than that between the Germans and
Jews’
• ‘There is no greater enmity in the world than that between these Germans and
the Jews’
• ‘A book you want to sell well in Germany should not contain insults directed at
Germans’ (German translator)

Translation and ideology 56

Aristophanes: Lysistrata: ‘Take him by the []’
• membrum virale
• leg
• nose
• handle
• prick
• life-lines
• penis 

Translation and ideology 57

Influence at different levels
• Censorship (and self-censorship)
• Word choice (Aristophanes’ Lysistrata – ‘take him by the....)
• Editing (Anne Frank – ‘these Germans’)
• Status of translation (Venuti’s invisibility and domestication)
• Acceptability of translation (Venuti - translation flows)

Translation and ideology 58

Feminist translation studies
“For feminist translation, fidelity is to be directed toward neither the
author nor the reader, but toward the writing project – a project in
which both writer and translator participate.”

Sherry Simon (1996: 1) Translation and Gender, London and New York: Routledge.

Translation and ideology 59

Feminist translation studies
• ‘Revisionist studies of the Bible have shown that translations have
traditionally hardened Christian attitudes against women, interpreting
these ancient texts ‘creatively’ in order to define women as the root
of evil (Korsak 1994/1995, 2005) or as untrustworthy and incapable
(Stanton 1898/1985), and casting the human male in the image of a
male God’
• Luise Von Flotow, ‘Gender and sexuality’, Encyclopedia of Translation Studies

Translation and ideology 60

Feminist translation studies
• ‘The case of Simone de Beauvoir in English translation provides many
examples of intellectual and literary censorship (Simons 1983; von
Flotow 2000a) that has truncated and misrepresented her thought,
making her work appear confused, conventionally patriarchal,
unpalatable, and hardly relevant to late twentieth century readers.
English translations of Beauvoir also provide excellent examples of
censored sexuality in translation: 1950s male translators working in
the US simply excised her daunting descriptions of awkward
contraceptive contraptions and erotic love scenes’
• Luise Von Flotow, ‘Gender and sexuality’, Encyclopedia of
Translation Studies
Translation and ideology 61
Feminist translation studies
• ‘Translations can be shown to be sensitive to such manifestations of gender,
exaggerate them or ignore and obscure them. Often, the translation effects
discerned through such analyses provide clues about the cultural and political
literary climate of the translating culture, or can be understood as a facet of this
climate’
• Luise Von Flotow, ‘Gender and sexuality’, Encyclopedia of Translation Studies

Translation and ideology 62

Postcolonial translation studies
• The hybridity of postcolonial writing and translation
• Challenge concepts of western translation theory (text, author,
unproblematic meaning)
• Translation not a humanistic enterprise but is linked to colonial
domination

Translation and ideology 63

Postcolonial translation studies
• ‘Translation from dominated cultures not only informs and empowers the colonizers but also
serves to interpellate the colonized into colonial subjects (Niranjana 1992). As a form of
representation, translation constructs a whole set of orientalist images of dominated cultures,
images which come to function as ‘realities’ for both dominant and dominated peoples. This is
accomplished through various means’:
• The choice of translation materials
• The orientalist paradigm of translation
• Fluent, domesticating translations

• Wang Hui, ‘Postcolonial approaches’, Encyclopedia of Translation Studies

Translation and ideology 64

Postcolonial translation studies
• Translations produced in this orientalist or philological tradition, identified by
Tymoczko as ‘the norm for translating the native texts of minority and non-
Western cultures’ (1999a: 269), have the potential of ‘constructing a posture of
esthetic … and … cultural imperialism’ because through them ‘the literature of
other cultures is reduced to non-literature and segments of world literature come
to be represented by non-literature’, leading to ‘the sort of judgment about non-
Western cultures.
• Wang Hui, ‘Postcolonial approaches’, Encyclopedia of Translation Studies

Translation and ideology 65

Postcolonial translation studies
• Translations produced in this orientalist or philological tradition, identified
by Tymoczko as ‘the norm for translating the native texts of minority and
non-Western cultures’ (1999a: 269), have the potential of ‘constructing a
posture of esthetic … and … cultural imperialism’ because through them
‘the literature of other cultures is reduced to non-literature and segments
of world literature come to be represented by non-literature’, leading to
‘the sort of judgment about non-Western literatures epitomized in
Macaulay’s infamous remarks that he had not found an Orientalist “who
could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the
whole native culture of India and Arabia”.’
• Wang Hui, ‘Postcolonial approaches’, Encyclopedia of Translation Studies

Translation and ideology 66

‘Thick’ translation
• ‘Thick’ translation: ‘seeks to locate a text (i.e. the translation) in a rich
cultural and linguistic context in order to promote, in the target
language culture, a fuller understanding and a deeper respect of the
culture of the Other’
• Cheung, Martha (2004/2007) ‘On Thick Translation as a Mode of Cultural Representation’

Translation and ideology 67

Conclusion
• ‘Ideological translation strategies can often only be inferred when one
accounts for dominant translation norms prevalent at certain periods
in history (Toury 1995). Social norms underlie correctness notions
which have a certain regulatory function. Correctness notions are
inextricably linked to specific values and ideas shared by groups and
communities, which attests to their largely ideological function. One
well-known example is a dominant translation style during 17th and
18th century France, when foreign-language material tended to be fit
as closely as possible into the French literary system.’
• Stefan Baumgarten, ‘Ideology and translation’, Handbook of
Translation Studies Online
Translation and ideology 68
Translation and equality
• Translation ‘is not an innocent, transparent activity but is highly
charged with significance at every stage; it rarely, if ever, involves a
relationship of equality between texts, authors or systems’.
• S. Bassnett and H. Trivedi, Postcolonial translation: theory and practice (1999)

Translation and ideology 69