Anthony
Pym
Universitat Rovira i Virgili
Tarragona, Spain*
A version of this text has appeared in Meta 40/4 (1995), 594-605.
Translation theory has long suffered a general conflict between source-focused
and target-focused approaches, with most theorists giving priority to one
side or the other. Some of this conflict might be resolved through an approach
that starts from both sides at once, privileging neither source nor target.
In view of this ideal, the model to be developed here sees the source and
target sides as social actors engaged in communication in order to achieve
mutual benefits. The model allows certain hypotheses to be adapted from
simple neoclassical negotiation theory, particularly the idea that the
social effort put into communication - the transaction costs - should not
exceed the mutual benefit to ensue from successful interaction. Translation
can be seen as a specific and variable transaction cost that is subject
to economic and ethical constraints. The aim of the model is to formulate
general hypotheses about the situations in which translation should take
place and what social costs it should involve.
The following explanation will seem insultingly reductive to some
and perhaps unnecessarily abstruse to others. I can only beg patience from
both sides.
And so to the model.
The simplest of the cooperation games used in negotiation theory
is based on actors investing in common services. Let us say A and B each
have $10 and can allocate any part of that sum to a common fund through
which they will receive a common service. The value of the service is presumed
to allow a better outcome than would be the case if the actors invested
separately. If A and B live in the same street and want to have rubbish
taken away from their homes, they both stand to gain from having just one
truck come to their street rather than have two individual trucks come
to two individual houses. The actors should negotiate in order to achieve
this mutually beneficial outcome.
Let us now suppose the outcome of cooperation is 33.3% greater than
the outcome of non-cooperation. If each actor invests $5 the common fund
will be $13.33 (5 + 5 + 33.3%) and the value returned to each could be
half that sum, $6.66. When this is added to the $5 not invested, we find
each actor finishes up with $11.66 worth of resources plus services. Both
have received more value than would be the case had they not cooperated.
Benefits exist for both sides. Both actors will continue to invest, a common
rubbish collection service will be established, and social life will be
a little happier as a result.
This is fine for as long as each actor invests $5 and can be sure
the other actor is going to invest the same sum. But social life is full
of inequalities. Not everyone is able to make the same investment. Not
everyone wants to. What happens then?
In some cases, unequal capacities do not really matter. Let us suppose
B can only invest $3. If A still invests $5, the common fund is $10.66
(5 + 3 + 33.3%) and the outcome - if we can simplify matters by splitting
the benefits 50/50 - is that A will have $10.33 and B will have $12.33
worth of resources and services. Although the investments and outcomes
are unequal, the cooperation is still beneficial for both sides. Actor
A has still gained 33 cents. Cooperation will thus still continue. Social
life will not only be happier but the process may become compatible with
a socially beneficial redistribution of wealth.
Yet social life is also full of self-interest. Some self-interested
actors are rational egoists. If B is such an egoist and can be sure A is
going to invest $5, B can maximize their own benefits by only investing
$3, regardless of how much they can actually afford to put in. Mutual benefits
will still exist; cooperation will still continue. In fact, a rational
egoist B need invest only as much as is necessary to ensure that
A finishes up slightly ahead and will keep cooperating. Neoclassical economists
tend to believe this kind of self-interest is ethically legitimate. Actor
B has, after all, ensured A's continued existence and economic betterment.
A whole branch of mathematics now calculates the minimum thresholds involved,
to ensure that economic ethics remain as rationally egoistic as possible.
Some self-interested actors might nevertheless be considered irrational
egoists or cheats. If B is sure A is going to invest $5, they could decide
to put in only $2. Under the above conditions the outcome would now be
that A finishes up with $9.66 and B has $13.66. Actor B has gained high
benefits but A now has less benefits than their starting position. Actor
A, if free enough to be at all rational, will not continue with the cooperation.
They will either hire their own individual rubbish truck or go off and
start negotiating with someone else. B has won the battle but lost the
war. Both actors will have to find other partners in future, since this
particular cooperation will remain a purely one-off affair. Social life
will be less happy as a result, making the outcome ethically unacceptable.
We have been looking at the following three games:
Many further games could be added to this table, especially since
the common cake can be split in any number of ways (in proportion to the
amounts invested, asymmetric opportunity costs, different risk calculations,
etc.). But an extended list of variants would not alter our main point.
Since we are interested in the ethical requirement that each actor ensure
at least the long-term well-being of the other - rather than ensure Mosaic
tit-for-tat or nationalist zero-sums -, our purposes are sufficiently served
by the threshold between games 2 and 3, between successful and unsuccessful
cooperation. In cases where B is sure A will invest a certain amount, this
threshold can be calculated faurly exactly (under the above conditions,
if A invests $5 a rational egoist B should invest just over $2.50). However,
the beauty of neoclassical ethics is that both A and B can be rational
egoists. Both can modify the amounts they invest. So neither can be really
sure how much the other is going to put in. Social life is full of uncertainty
and mistrust. Each actor must now try to predict the other's future actions.
This is where rational cooperation becomes interesting; the $10 game becomes
a series of prisoner's dilemmas; calculations have to be based on the probability
of the other actor's investments. More important, in order to attain cooperation,
each actor needs information upon which their probabilistic calculations
can be based. The location and use of this information, necessary for relations
of relative mutual trust and prediction, incurs significant costs that
must be incorporated into the overall calculation, as we shall now see.
The idea of cooperation leading to mutual benefits is not limited
to rubbish disposal. It can be applied to any form of social contract,
from the simple exchange of goods to the development of taxation and state
institutions. It is also the basis of international negotiations. If free
trade is considered to be of potential mutual benefit, one might try to
negotiate GATT or NAFTA accords. Nuclear disarmament might also be of mutual
benefit, justifying extensive negotiation in order to achieve cooperation.
On all these levels, each actor must try to predict other actors' current
status and future actions. A restaurant proprietor might look at how a
client is dressed in order to predict if the bill is going to be paid;
the client looks at the restaurant to see if it warrants the advertised
prices. Similarly, the United States and the Soviet Union once looked at
each other's nuclear arsenals in order to calculate thresholds for rational
disarmament. But the bankrupt client in a restaurant can dress well in
order to deceive; insubstantial food can be served in fancy plates; and
nuclear arsenals were calculated in many cunningly different ways. Prediction
of the other's status and future actions has never been an easy affair.
The information needed for probabilistic prediction can come from
many sources. One might look at the way the other actor has behaved in
the past (a job candidate presents a curriculum vitae); one could carry
out research into the other's financial status, cultural background and
psychological make-up; one might engage in long haggling processes to find
out just how much the other actor is really prepared to concede. Any information
could prove valuable.
Yet the collection and evaluation of information is an expensive
business. One has to invest not just in the projected mutual benefits but
also in the necessary information-gathering process, including arrangement
of the contact situation. These latter investments in the gathering and
use of information are called transaction costs.
The transaction costs in the above games have artificially been fixed
at zero. If we now suppose each actor has to invest 50 cents in order to
organize the cooperation and attain a position of relative trust, we find
that game 2, where A was only 33 cents ahead, has become unsuccessful.
At zero transaction cost, actor A could benefit from this game; at a 50-cent
transaction cost A finishes up making a loss. The game will not lead to
any stable social relationship. It follows that, for each actor, the transaction
costs should be less than the projected benefit.
If we insist that each side should ethically ensure the well-being
of the other, the transaction costs that most interest us are not directly
those borne by individual actors or their agents (possibly translators).
We are more concerned with the total transaction cost born by all actors
together. Like mutual benefits, the cost-cake can be cut in any number
of ways, but its total sum will still represent the bilateral social effort
put into the transaction. If cooperation ethics are to be observed, the
total transaction costs clearly should not be more than the total mutual
benefits.
This analysis can be taken further. There will obviously be a level
of total transaction cost at which no interaction can be mutually beneficial
($3.33 in the above example). More generally, the higher the social effort,
the more restricted the number of games with mutually beneficial outcomes.
Transaction costs should thus be kept not only below the upper threshold
but also low enough to allow for a range of possible successful games corresponding
to the probabilistic calculations of both actors. Absolute certainty may
be ideal but it is mostly too expensive to attain. Effort must be kept
within a range of relative certainty proportional to the benefits of the
cooperation concerned. Of course, there will almost always be some uncertainty.
Most decisions have to be based on incomplete calculations, hunches, intuition,
the following of one's heart or a feeling in the gonads. These are all
ways of acting with limited transaction costs.
Should transaction costs then be best fixed as close to zero as possible?
There will be a tendency towards decreasing costs if two actors keep cooperating
successfully. Whatever the initial transaction costs, they will gradually
build up an affective relationship of trust and mutual prediction that
can be maintained with little further information input. But this kind
of assurance is more difficult to attain in multilateral situations. If
transaction costs are so low that all information is uniformly available
to everyone, each actor can negotiate with every other actor, shopping
around to fix their investments at the lowest possible thresholds. Cooperative
arrangements will tend to be purely rationalist one-off affairs, better
conducted by computers than people. Indeed, according to Keohane "in
certain situations an infinite series of available coalitions may form"
(1984: 87). Such situations would not give relationships of mutual trust
and prediction a chance to develop, neither rationally nor affectively.
Social life will be less happy as a result.
Some transaction costs should thus be maintained and structured in
such a way that the number of actors is restricted. The conventions of
friendship do this, as indeed do most international organizations. NATO
is an institution for the exchange of strategic information and promises
between its members. It does little more than structure transaction costs
between a limited number of actors. Indeed, NATO's use of transaction costs
is so beneficial to its members that the organization continues to exist
in the absence of the purpose for which it was originally set up, and now
does so by carefully restricting the entry of new members. Indeed, if cooperation
is the aim, any restrictive organization is better than none at all.
This idea can of course be applied to individual tongues and cultures,
which structure information and transaction costs so as to enable cooperation
between the participating members, regardless of the initial purposes that
gave rise to the structures concerned. One might also see state bureaucracies
as apparatuses for the structuring of transaction costs within a society.
The idea has numerous applications on many social levels.
But it is time we put translation into this framework.
Transaction costs can include the production, location, transfer,
translation, and evaluation of information. Although translation need not
always figure in this chain it can become a key element. There are at least
three reasons for this special importance. First, translation is used in
specifically transcultural communication, in situations where shared norms
have generally not been as firmly established as is the case in intracultural
communication. Second, translation is a relatively high but controllable
transaction cost. If kept at expensive levels it can condemn many potentially
cooperative relationships to failure. And third, there is a link between
translation costs and the costs of evaluating the translator's output.
If a machine-produced translation is relatively cheap but difficult to
read, the low translation cost is offset by high cost of extracting pertinent
information. By modifying translation costs, one can also modify evaluation
costs and thus extend or restrict the number of actors able to participate
in the cooperation. Each of these points requires further comments.
Whether or not one agrees that the production of a translation by
definition marks a border between cultures, communication requiring translation
remains particularly problematic. At least since Northrop (1952), negotiation
theory has recognized that the existence of different political and linguistic
cultures presents special difficulties for any international agreement.
Yet this does not mean that all cultural differences are of equal importance.
When Rocky or Rambo grunts something idiomatic that the American audience
finds difficult to understand - was it English? was it language? -, a pedantic
dubber or subtitler into a foreign language could spend hours locating
the nuance, analyzing its contextual discursive impact and calculating
a target-culture version. But the translator would soon be out of business.
The pertinent mutual benefits - money for the film industry, visual action
for the audience - require minimal translation costs. The fim-makers and
the audience already trust and predict that the other party will supply
the goods. In such a situation any grunt will do, although a subtitled
one would probably be so obtrusive as to reduce mutual benefits. The translator
should move as quickly as possible to more demanding tasks. At the other
extreme, however, there are cases where potential mutual benefits are so
great and yet so difficult to attain that extremely high translation costs
are justified. An Israeli government interested in negotiating with Syria
might even employ someone like Gideon Toury - while doing his army service
- to translate a biography of President Hafez Assad into Hebrew, complete
with the employment of Arabists to revise the text and to add an introduction.
When the stakes are high, the social effort put into translation can also
be high.
The particular interest of translation is that it is a relatively
controllable transaction cost. Once the desirability of certain information
has been ascertained, the costs of production, location and transfer (all
non-translational) are relatively fixed. Their sum can be acceptable at
any level from just below the projected benefits to just above zero (remembering
that it is beneficial to have some level of transaction some costs). But
the only way really to control such variability is by limiting the initial
desire to seek the information. The insertion of translation into this
chain potentially enables greater control, especially if we understand
translation as encompassing a wide range of translational products. Gouadec
(1989: 22-30) usefully describes such products as including anything from
a bibliographic reference and summary of contents ("traduction signalétique")
to a complete representation of as many textual factors as possible ("traduction
absolue"), the choice of one type or another depending on the communicative
purpose of the information. Of particular interest here is what might be
termed "pretranslating," understood as use of the lower-cost
end of such a scale as a stage prior to any work at the higher-cost end.
Pretranslating can allow information flows to be vetted, creating loops
to and from decisions to produce fuller translations. Such processes can
significantly control transaction costs.
In general, however, translation must be recognized as a relatively
high-cost operation, whether measured in terms of social effort, rates
of pay, or the consequences of error. The use of pretranslations can reduce
costs but it cannot do away with the fact that translation should only
become a transaction cost when significant mutual benefits are projected.
Translation is not for any old cross-cultural contact.
As vetting processes or pretranslations demonstrate, translation
costs are closely related to variable evaluation costs. A low-cost pretranslation
may allow a low-cost evaluation, then shifting if necessary to a higher-cost
translation and higher-cost evaluation. On the other hand, if one translates
too much, producing full translations of document after document of relatively
useless information, the rising costs concern not just the translator's
fees but also the effort of whoever has to read through the translator's
products to check that the information is useless. Wasteful translation
costs can incur wasteful evaluation costs. Yet the relationship is not
always so direct. Translators can put in a great deal of real effort (the
classical "labour of the file") to produce a text that can be
evaluated with relative ease. A lack of translative effort (as in ambiguous
or highly redundant instruction manuals) can increase evaluation costs.
And if high-effort "resistant" translations (as advocated by
Venuti 1992) require high-effort evaluation processes, the link stands
in no clear relationship to any mutual benefits except those accruing to
the restricted readership of the translation.
The analysis of simple cooperation suggests that translation costs
should generally be kept as low as possible (although above zero), aiming
to reduce the translation of unnecessary texts and trying to keep evaluation
costs also as low as possible. The reason for this is simple. The higher
the total transaction costs, the narrower the scope for agreement and the
less happy social life will be.
The above model does not see translators as negotiators. It portrays
them as mediators who can enable or prohibit certain cooperation practices.
If translators work with or for negotiators, their position is perhaps
like that of Vance and Owen in the ruins of Yugoslavia, or the United Nations
in Cambodia or Somalia. The hermeneutics that interest us concern not so
much how the translator comes to terms with a text but how the actors on
either side of the translator come to terms with each other. For the model,
cooperation between these actors is more important than the priorities
of the translator as mediator.
Cooperation could nevertheless be in the long-term interests of the
translator as mediator. To put it too simply (the principle will soon be
revised), the more the actors cooperate, the greater their mutual benefits
and the more resources they can allocate to pay translators. This argument
has several more virtuous aspects.
If A has employed me to translate, it would seem logical for me to
raise my rates to the highest level A can afford and then advance A's cause
as much as possible so I can be paid even more. Yet this unilateral frame
would work against my long-term self-interest in two ways. First, each
time I raise the translation costs, A's scope for bargaining will be reduced
and B's probabilistic information will have to be more exact. Transaction
costs will thus be raised on both sides - the unilateral frame is delusive
- and the scope for mutual benefits will be narrowed. There will be less
cooperation and thus less demand for my translations. Second, more obviously,
if I advance A's cause to the point where B is destroyed or robbed of any
chance to participate in mutual benefits, cooperation will come to an end
and there will be no further employment of translators in the interaction
concerned. The translator's long-term interests are thus incompatible with
unilateral allegiance.
This principle could inform actual decision-making operations. Situations
inevitably arise where the translator must decide between the priorities
of competing actors. No theory can prescribe the way translators should
turn in all cases. However, especially on the large-scale level of translators
as collectivities and actors as cultures, choices might ethically be made
by privileging the interests of the weaker actor. In the years I spent
translating into English for the president of Catalonia, my decisions were
constantly in favor of promoting English-language awareness of Catalan
culture (Pym 1991). This was not because I agreed with nationalist fanatics
(I didn't and I don't). It was instead because the extreme imbalance between
Catalan and English-language cultures meant that prolonged cooperation
required special attention to the interests of the weaker side. After all,
if Catalan culture became progressively weaker, its range of possible cooperation
situations would diminish, the market for translations from Catalan would
narrow, and there would be less demand for anyone's competence as a translator
from Catalan. Translators' collective interests are thus generally best
served by opting in favor of the weaker actor in any cooperation situation,
regardless of whether this actor is the actual initiator, client, sender,
or receiver.
Although this precept does no more than defend the collective interest
of translators, it remains coherent with the ethical value of cooperation
as such. It could moreover be incorporated into a wider cultural ecologism,
arguing that cultural diversity is a value in itself and must be preserved.
I nevertheless refrain from adopting this latter argument because I also
recognize the need for cultures to change, to adapt themselves to new situations
so as to develop better bargaining positions. An ethics of translation
is not required to defend the eternal values of Bosnian Muslims, Tibetan
monks, French farmers, or Scottish poets. Cultural rigidity or failure
to adapt is a pity, but it is a failure.
A further consequence of the transaction-cost model is that, allowing
that their own interests are generally compatible with the ethical value
of cooperation, translators should be prepared to do rather more than just
translate. If they are in a position to carry out other mediatory tasks,
they should do so. This could involve things like actively preselecting
information, advising on how a particular text should be translated, and
suggesting how best to act in order to attain cooperation. A final consequence
is of course that translators should be trained to carry out this wider
range of mediatory tasks. More pointedly, they should be trained to know
when not to translate.
Translation is just one of several strategies for intercultural communication.
The main alternative strategy is probably language learning, which does
away with the need for translation by having one actor speak the language
of the other or by having both adopt a lingua franca. Since language
learning requires very high initial effort and costs, it is a bad strategy
for one-off or short-term cooperation. However, once a language has been
learnt to any degree of proficiency, the repeat costs become minimal and
will reduce with continued use. Language learning is thus a good strategy
for long-term cooperation. Translation costs, on the other hand, decline
minimally. Some reduction in social effort does come about with repeated
translating of the same subject matter, especially once basic terminology
has been established and the translator gains familiarity with the actors.
But there is no drastic drop; translators are still paid at fairly constant
rates, by the hour or page. All else being equal (which is never the case),
the costs of the two strategies over time might be represented in the following
way:
Area S1 quantifies the relative savings to be gained from a translation
strategy in short-term situations. Area S2 shows the savings from language
learning in long-term situations. If the duration of the cooperation situation
is less than t1, translation should be used. If it is between t1 and t2
(the point in time where S1=S2), translation should be mixed with language
learning, ideally in the proportion of S1 to S2. For anything longer than
t2, of course, language-learning strategies should become progressively
dominant.
Assuming that high transaction costs are generally to be reduced,
actors should select their strategy according to the probable duration
of the cooperation situation, which should be seen as including whatever
communication is needed to ensure continued cooperation. Translation is
clearly better for an initial contact meeting or a one-off conference.
The Barcelona Olympic Games, as a four-year project, justified translation
strategies yet was near the threshold where language learning was sometimes
more economical, warranting intensive language classes for the main organizers
(Pym 1993). The European Union, if one believes it to be a long-term project,
should rationally adopt language-learning strategies (as does EFTA, for
which the negotiating language is English). Indeed, the fact that translation
still remains important within EU institutions contributes to significant
and unsustainable transaction costs. Coulmas estimates that the EU's language
policy consumes some 40% of the total administrative budget. The reason,
says Coulmas, is a form of linguistic nationalism that has little to do
with the interests of long-term cooperation, since the Union "has
been used by member states to defend their languages' privileged position
rather than being given the chance to produce a language policy of its
own" (1990: 8). The politics of symbolic value have so far won out
over the analysis of transaction costs.
One possible solution to this problem is to invest in advanced computer-assisted
translation, which could make the above translation-cost curve look like
the language-learning one (high initial costs for very low repeat costs).
Yet the difficulty of this solution, beyond the cost of developing the
technology, is the potential increase in evaluation costs, which would
then have to be reduced by some other means. Who is going to read all the
automatically produced translations?
A more immediate sign of a change is the adoption of a "real-needs"
policy, combining translation with the language-learning strategies needed
for multilingual conversations. But the current enlargement of the EU should
require an even more significant move away from translation. The professional
translators we are now training will eventually have to turn to a wider
range of no less complicated mediatory tasks.
There is an interesting contradiction here. We have assumed that
translators' collective interests are broadly compatible with long-term
cooperation. Yet we now find that some long-term relationships are better
suited to language-learning strategies. Ethically, translators should recognize
this. In such situations they should recommend against translation, even
when this goes against their collective interest as translators. Some years
ago I translated physics and biology from Spanish into English, earning
good money and learning many interesting things. But since Spanish science
is in an inextricably long-term relationship with English-language science,
my strategy changed. Once I realized that most of the Spanish authors could
write at least poor English, it became quicker for me and cheaper for them
to adopt a language-learning strategy. I sat down with them and corrected
their papers, fixing my fees at language-class rates. The authors learnt
better English; I continued to learn interesting things for a while; and
translation gave way to a more rational long-term transaction strategy.
The model I have presented is based on the simplest level of cooperation.
Its only properly ethical principles are non-destruction of the other and
the priority of long-term cooperation. I have not insisted that actors
be prepared to make substantial short-term sacrifices for the sake of long-term
cooperative relationships, although one does find cases of this happening
(Dutch and Erse are not official EU languages; Spaniards have effectively
sacrificed Spanish as a language for the initial announcing of scientific
advances). In terms of international relations theory my model remains
optimistically liberal rather than pessimistically restrictive or realist
(cf. Krasner 1983: 1-8, Kohler-Koch 1989: 17-19).
The transaction-cost model has been drawn from a neoclassical view
of decision-making, a view that has correctly been criticized in recent
translation theory (Séguinot 1991, Tirkkonen-Condit 1992). Yet the
consequences of the model need not be restricted to neoclassical assumptions
or an ethics of crude economic efficiency. The model does not say everyone
is a rational egoist; it merely shows that cooperation can exist in the
case of rational egoists. If the rationalist conditions on subjectivity
are then relaxed, allowing for irrational or non-egoistic generosity or
stupidity, the chances of cooperation in fact become greater (cf. Keohane
1984: 112ff). The model can thus be taken beyond its initial assumptions.
Indeed, by the time one gets to two actors making uncertain assumptions
about the other's status and future actions, there is no reason why its
intersubjectivity could not become rather Lacanian.
The model's prime purpose is clearly not to describe everything that
happens or could happen in the field of translation. It merely describes
something that can happen - cooperation - and some of the ways in
which translation can contribute to this outcome. The model becomes ethical
when one argues that cooperation should happen wherever possible.
This is not moralizing in a narrow prescriptive sense. The model offers
no more than a simple guide for the perplexed, proposing a course of action
for the attainment of a general goal. If a translator sees no ethical value
in that goal - if hegemonic relations or nationalist priorities are thought
to be better than cooperation -, then the model has nothing to propose
to that particular translator.
The model might nevertheless be of interest to translation theory
to the extent that it introduces a frame for debates about ethics. Beyond
delimiting the translator's responsibility, it can attribute a goal to
translation itself. It can moreover inscribe this goal within a wider social
ethics, the ultimate goal of which, in Aristotelian terms, is the attainment
of happiness. I see no reason why translation theory should not talk about
a little happiness.
Let me close by briefly suggesting how the transaction-cost model
might be related to a few existing translation theories.
Game theory was of course introduced into translation theory by Levy
(1967), whose general "minimax" principle - that the translator
must exert minimum effort for maximum effect - remains valid. But Levy
never defined the general "effect" of translation, allowing his
essay to wander between source-text determinism and reader-response relativism.
The above model can give a general criterion for the weighting of such
variants. Further, whereas Levy adopted a restrictive view of translation
as a "game with complete information" (1967: 39), the transaction-cost
model assumes no such closure, accepting probabilistic behavior in a world
of uncertainties. In fact, the model suggests that the minimax principle
would be contradicted by any insistence on complete information or absolute
certainty. Some factors should remain relatively unknown precisely
because the cost of reducing their uncertainty will exceed the potential
mutual benefits. Interestingly enough, Christiane Nord's model of translation
accepts Levy's determinist principle (1988: 40) and consequently recommends
that translators invest quite extreme effort in source-text analysis. The
principle of complete information might be a useful fiction in translator
training, but it unthinkingly sanctions transaction costs that are often
far higher than an ethics of cooperation can allow.
Related doubts about the transaction-cost model might come from theorists
concerned with the translating of literary or philosophical texts. Following
Schleiermacher's exclusion of negotiation from the realm of translation
proper (1813), some might argue that literary-philosophical translation
concerns disinterested aesthetic value or operates on a diachronic relation
between texts rather than a synchronic relation between people. Some might
even argue that, because of diachrony, most literary-philosophical actors
do not live in the same street, making translation a fact of one actor
only. Several answers are possible here. First, if one were to ascribe
an infinite value to aesthetic appreciation or philosophical enlightenment
as a mutual benefit to be attained between author and reader, then the
logic of Pascal's wager could wholly justify infinite translation costs.
The transaction-cost model would be able to describe a certain literary-philosophical
ideology, if not entirely the actual practice of literary-philosophical
translation. Second, wherever values are less than infinite, a sociologist
might insist that any society engaged in the reception and translation
of great foreign texts has more than aesthetic interests at stake. Translations
from dead cultures tend to enter conflicts within the target society, making
cooperation an internal rather than transcultural ideal. Further, literary-philosophical
translations between co-existing cultures provide a thousand intangible
pieces of information on the mind sets of major trading partners, potential
political enemies, or the controllers of international power relations.
Transcultural literary formations, Goethian Weltliteratur if you
like, provide invaluable common references for the social elites forging
the most crucial international cooperation relationships. There are many
quite non-aesthetic or non-philosophical reasons why a society might invest
part of its resources in the translation of great foreign texts. Without
falling back on any economic determinism, these reasons can be described
by a notion of cooperation adapted to macrosocial levels.
Beyond the specificity of great texts, the transaction-cost model
fits in with dialogic theory as it has influenced thought on translation
at least since Schleiermacher and more recently with reference to relevance
theory (Gutt 1991) and Bakhtin (Lang 1992). Yet the model retains certain
peculiarities. It does not assume actors that are axiomatically separate,
equal, or defined by unchangeable specificities or intentions. Although
distinguished by otherness, both sides are from the outset conditioned
by the state and potential of their interrelationships. Theirs is a mutually
active otherness. There is no question of having to decide between source
and target priorities as such. Nor does the model mean the actors are dominated
by systems or polysystems within any larger system. Cooperation situations
only concern those areas in which mutual benefits can be attained; they
do not automatically concern relationships between entire systems.
Recent applications of postcolonial theory to translation (as in
Bassnett 1991, Niranjana 1992) might benefit from the transaction-cost
model to the extent that it refuses any systemic read-off from power relationships.
Even when A and B are highly unequal they can still cooperate rationally
and overcome imbalances in certain areas, independently of any prolonged
ideological struggle. This is why negotiation theory talks about "regimes"
as the sets of principles and norms required to achieve cooperation, explicitly
to distinguish such principles and norms from totalizing theories of "international
systems" like colonialism (Keohane 1984: 25-28, 57-59). Hegemony,
conflict, and exploitation to not infiltrate everything. Nor do they provide
good guidelines for future action in the field of translation.
The transaction-cost model should also be compatible with the broad
principles of Holz-Mänttäri's Handlungstheorie (1984)
and Vermeer's Skopostheorie (as in Reiss & Vermeer 1984). However,
if the less careful target-oriented approaches occasionally imply a mercenary
ethics based on short-term unilateral rewards (do what your client tells
you to do; shoot where you're told to shoot), acceptance of mutual benefits
as the general goal of translation might give our work a more noble and
perhaps happier purpose.
*This research was carried out with the assistance of a fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for work at the Special Research Center in Literary Translation (Sonderforschungsbereich 309) at the University of Göttingen, Germany.
Bassnett, Susan. 1991. "Translation and Ideology." Koinè
1:2. 7-32.
Coulmas, Florian. 1991. "European Integration and the Idea of a National
Language." Florian Coulmas ed. A Language Policy for the European
Community. Prospects and Quandaries. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
1-37.
Gouadec, Daniel. 1989. Le traducteur, la traduction et l'entreprise.
Paris: Afnor.
Gutt, Ernst-August. 1991. Translation and Relevance. Cognition and Context.
Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Holz-Mänttäri, Justa. 1984. Translatorisches Handeln. Theorie
und Methode. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica.
Keohane, Robert O. 1984. After Hegemony. Cooperation and Discord in
the World Political Economy. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.
Kohler-Koch, Beate. 1989. "Zur Empirie und Theorie internationaler
Regime." Beate Kohler-Koch ed. Regime in den internationalen Beziehungen.
Baden-Baden: Nomos.
Krasner, Stephen D. 1983. "Structural causes and regime consequences:
Regimes as intervening variables." Stephen D. Krasner ed. International
Regimes. Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press. Fifth Printing,
1989.
Lang, George. 1992. "La Belle Altérité: Towards a Dialogical
Paradigm in Translation Theory?" Canadian Review of Comparative
Literature 19:1-2. 237-251.
Levy, Jirí. 1967. "Translation as a Decision Process."
Andrew Chesterman ed. Readings in Translation Theory. Helsinki:
Oy Finn Lectura Ab, 1989. 37-52.
Niranjana, Tejaswini. 1992. Siting Translation. History, Post-Structuralism,
and the Colonial Context. Berkeley & Oxford: University of California
Press.
Nord, Christiane. 1988. Textanalyse und Übersetzen. Heidelberg:
Julius Groos.
Northrop, Filmer Stuart Cuckow. 1952. The Taming of the Nations. A Study
of the Cultural Bases of International Policy. Reprint. Woodbridge
Connecticut: Ox Bow Press, 1987.
Reiss, Katharina, & Vermeer, Hans J. 1984. Grundlegung einer allgemeinen
Translationstheorie. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Schleiermacher, Friedrich. 1813. "Über die verschiedenen Methoden
des Übersetzens." Sämtliche Werke, Dritte Abteilung:
Zur Philosophie. Vol. 2. Berlin: Reimer, 1838. 207-245.
Pym, Anthony. 1991. "Translational Ethics and the Recognition of Stateless
Nations." Fremdsprachen 1991:4. 31-35.
Pym, Anthony. 1993. "Translating the Symbolic Olympics at Barcelona."
Paper presented to the XIX International FILLM Congress, Brasilia, August
1993. Publication in the corresponding proceedings.
Séguinot, Candace. 1991. "A Study of Student Translation Strategies."
Sonja Tirkkonen-Condit ed. Empirical Research in Translation and Intercultural
Studies. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. 79-88.
Tirkkonen-Condit, Sonja. 1992. "A Theoretical Account of Translation
- Without Translation Theory?." Target 4:2. 237-245.
Venuti, Lawrence. 1992. "Introduction." Lawrence Venuti ed. Rethinking
Translation. Discourse, Subjectivity, Ideology. London & New York:
Routledge.
Go to position paper: Transferre non semper necesse est.
Return to On-Line Colloquium Page.
