10-12

10. Translation as System

Luhmann’s key terms and concepts: The social
system is made up of communicaton. The
boundaries between social systems are those
watersheds where meaning is processed differently
on one side as compared with the other. Each
system looks at the rest of the world from its own
point of view.
Social systems are self-reproducing (autopoietic)
and self-referential.
 Luhmann’s theory applied to
translation
• Poltermann: Literature possesses a degree of
autonomy.
• Poltermann’s explanation about some
phenomena in theatre translation: meeting
genre expectations （ norms) - The existing
translations become out-dated and criticized
over-time and the alternative renderings
unfold gradually.
• Luhmann: Communication is not the transmission of
a pre-given message. It is construed by the recipients
as a result of recognizing selectivity.  Text and
utterances have no fixed meaning.
• Applied to translation: Only part of the original text’s
meaning is selected to be translated in a certain
form, style & mode
• Reason: to meet the expectations, i.e. The
constitutive norms.
• Luhmann: expectations are structures;
• A self-reproducing/autopoietic system: structure and
process support each other.
 What makes translation a social
system?
• 1. translation’s external reference: it’s linked
to other texts (translation or not) of the same
style or the same type.

• 2. translation’s self-reference: Style also links

a particular translation with other
translations.
Cognitive expectations Autonomy (self-reference)

• 3. Expectations
Normative expections Heteronomy (external reference)
• Translation’s primary function: producing
representations of anterior discourses across
semiotic boundaries. guiding difference

Illusion of
equivalence

consequences
Possessing a
Somewhat like direct
hybrid discursive
and indirect quotation
subject
Translation’s binary code: valid or not
valid as representation.
• The terms of the basic code change and take the
form of different criteria /preferences /poetics.
• The terms can express all the normative expectations
and codifications of translation.
• A social system is open for inputs from outside the
system, and processes these inputs in its own terms.
 operational closure; external reference;
heteronomy.
• Translation is less autonomous than modern art or
religion & therefore very prone to interference.
Self-reference makes translation has a
momentum of its own.
• The translation system continually reproduces
itself.  the term “translation” has no fixed,
inherent, immanent meaning.

• Its durability stems from its autopoiesis as a

system, i.e. from recursive operations of self-
production and self-reflexiveness.
 Differences between self-reference
and external reference
• A translation’s external reference can be understood
as its assimilation to other signifying practices.

• Self-reference contribute to the autopoiesis of

translation. Through grounding itself in similarities
and contrasts with existing translations & discourses
about translation, it helps to structure, to maintain
and to modify the system.
 A different perspective: Luhmann’s
second-order observation
• Translation practice is the first-order
observation.
• Self-reflexive comments & activities is the
second-order observation.
• Our comments on translation and translators
are also second-order observations.
 Two epistemological paradoxes
• 1. No fundamental difference between translators
acting as second-order observers of their own work
and researchers acting as second-order observers of
translators’ second-order observations. – a question
of neat separation between object-level and meta-
level.

• We can’t say the descriptivists are wholly neutral.

• The relative strength of this position lies in the
awareness of its own ambivalence and contingency.
 Two epistemological paradoxes
• 2. a representation crisis.

• Ways to come to terms with the paradox:

• 1. Recent practices in ethnography: Being aware of
the colonial history roots, they have become more
self-reflexive and self-critical.
• 2. Luhmann’s system theory: anti-foundationalism;
every description remains partial.
 11.Criticisms

• Criticism outside the empirical/systemic

paradigm.
• brief and highly selective account
• Types of criticism rather than individual critics
• Several categories:
①Criticism voiced from a position fundamentally at odds
with the entire orientation and purpose of the descriptive
approach.
e.g. Peter Newmark’s criticism.

②Comments which take issue with certain theoretical or

methodological aspects of the paradigm while being largely
sympathetic to it.
e.g. Göttingen research centre members’ critical line.

③ Between these two poles: various types of criticism which

are prepared to acknowledge the achievements of the
Manipulation group but perceive weaknesses and
shortcomings on the basis of a different agenda.
 Peter Newmark’s criticism
1.what translation theory is about.
• The study and theory of translation has its rationale in the
benefit that can accrue from it for the practice of translating and of
translator training.

• But this is exactly what the descriptive paradigm contested from

the start.

2.From this basic difference comes the actual conflict:

• It concerns the descriptivists’ unwillingness to work towards
explicit value judgments' regarding translation quality or to
formulate criteria for accuracy in translation, both crucial to
Newmark’s vision.

Newmark blames the functionalist principle of descriptive analysis

because its relativism will not recognize an immanent or universal
essence in what translation is or should be.
 Göttingen research centre members
• They stressed their own priorities under the
banner of ‘historical descriptive’ fieldwork. They
resisted the extension of the field beyond
conventional forms of translation, also having
criticism of the Manipulation school’s approaches
which are the exclusive orientation on the target
pole, and the system concept.

• They claimed transfer-oriented stance as

inherently more comprehensive than either
source-oriented or target-oriented approaches.
 Antoine Berman
• Launched a critique of descriptivism which sought to
revalue the translator’s subjectivity.

• read norms as deterministic, norm-based approach

denied all creativity to translation and translators (but
appear to be based on misunderstandings).

• Criticizes Even-Zohar’s assumption about the

‘secondary’ role played by the large majority of
translations, which underplays the translations’
creative and formative aspect.

• André Lefevere also rejected the ‘primary’ and

‘secondary’ opposition in Even-Zohar’s theory.
 Anthony Pym
• Pym criticized the way descriptive studies have
operated with norms, saying that it is not clear
what exactly norms constrain; too much
emphasis is placed on stability rather than
change; insufficient attention is paid to the gap
separating translation practice from what is said
about.

• Pym’s main critique of the notion of system has

been that systemic approaches remain
“fundamentally unable to model social
causation”, because social and cultural causation
is likely to be a complicated and anything but
clear-cut affair, involving multilayered correlation
and filtering.
• Lawrence Venuti thinks research into translation can
never be simply descriptive, because the decision to
select so marginalized a cultural practice like
translation is an act of opposition.

• According to Hermans, Venuti’s critique of

descriptivism has some justification, but every vantage
point contains its blind spot.

• To Hermans’s mind, the critical task of translation

theory doesn’t consist in advocating resistant or
oppositional or compliant or fluent or any other mode
of translating but consists in theorizing the historical
contingency of these modes together with the
concepts and discourses underpinning them.
 12.Perspectives
Where is the descriptive and systemic paradigm
likely to go?

• The history of translation is bound to be remain a

key area of research. Historical research will need
to be more concrete ,alive to the intricacies of
specific circumstances and the material and the
symbolic stake of the situation, but also more
circumspect, aware of the interpretive and
evaluative determinants of its conduct.
• Appropriate tools need to be devised to study
translation in our contemporary social and
technological world, tools which can cope
with the mobility and communities, with the
help of various mess media.

• Methodologies required to study text-based

translation and various forms of interpreting
also merit further attention.
• An obvious lack in translation studies is
located at the level of theory.

• The discipline, but the descriptive school in

particular, urgently needs to take account of
developments in some of the more vigorous
intellectual and social movements of our
time , including gender studies, post-
structuralism, postcolonial and cultural
studies and the new interdisciplinary invading
the human science.
• The middle range between close textual
interpretation and grand theory has gone missing
and this middle range is worth reclaiming.

• Descriptive translation studies operate to their

greatest advantage in the middle range, where
they can query theoretical assumptions without
losing touch with the varied historical and
sociocultural practices of translation , and can
delay the attribution of meaning to individual
texts by reflecting on the methodological and
theoretical implications of such a move.