Translation Politicised and Politics Translated

Figures

Figure 7.1. The Thai version of the graphic declaration as circulated online.

Figure 7.2. The English version of the graphic declaration as circulated online.

Tables

Table 3.1. The Translators’ strategies

Table 7.1. Translation of the term ผู้ประท้วง and the phrase ด้วยรถฉีดน้ำแรงดันสูง in eight TTs

Table 7.2. Translation of the terms เรียกร้อง, มิอาจทน, ความหลอกลวง อยุติธรรม และความโหดร้ายอย่างเป็นระบบ and รัฐบาลเผด็จการ in eight TTs

Table 7.3. Translation of the phrases อีกทั้ง, อำนาจมืด and คอยชักใย in eight TTs

Table 9.1. Discourse selection and pairing

Table 9.2. Harris (2017a) national partnership for women and families Gala

Table 9.3. Obama (2016a) remarks at the United State of women summit dinner

Table 9.4. Harris (2017b) women unshackled

Table 9.5. Obama (2011) Keynote address at young African women leaders forum

Table 9.6. Harris (2007) San Francisco State University commencement address

Table 9.7. Obama (2009) University of California, Merced commencement speech

Table 9.8. Harris (2019) presidential campaign announcement

Table 9.9. Obama (2016b) campaigning for Hillary Clinton

Table 9.10. Harris (2020a) vice presidential nomination acceptance DNC speech←ix | x→

Table 9.11. Obama (2020) 2020 DNC speech

Table 9.12. Harris (2020b) Kamala Harris victory speech

Table 9.13. Obama (2008) keynote address at 2008 DNC

Table 9.14. Interpreters’ best practices for audience empowerment in feminine style rhetoric contexts

Table 10.1. A list of songs performed by Jessie J in SINGER 2018

Translation Politicised & Politics Translated: Setting the Scene

This volume, titled Translation Politicised & Politics Translated, presents a comprehensive, state-of-the-art overview of the different ways in which the two terms, politics and translation, interact. Politics, to make a start, refers to all those strategies and techniques employed by those involved in any activity to get what they want. However, politics in this volume refers to those strategies and techniques which are utilised by all those involved in the process of translation at its macro level to achieve their aim while they domesticate or foreignise the text in hand. If they domesticate the text, they ‘leave the reader alone’ as much as possible and bring the original text to him/her; if they foreignise it, they ‘leave the author alone’ as much as possible and bring the reader to him/her, thereby having access to the original culture. For a concise discussion, see Schulte and Biguenet (1992: 41–42) and see also the classic, more linguistically oriented terms ‘covert’ and ‘overt’ translation (House, 2015).

Recent scholarship identifies the following stages of the translation process: pre-translation, translation, and post-translation (Gouadec, 2007: 13). As a product, translation is a result of the interaction among social agents involved in the process (Human, 2016: 428): translators, editors, revisers, proofreaders, translation initiators, translation quality controllers, translation managers and others, depending on the policy and infrastructure of a company (Almanna, 2013: 95). Social agents involved in the process of translation at its macro-level have a clear understanding of their duties and responsibilities. They can make an informed decision about accepting a brief; they know when to be lenient, how to act, react and behave; they prioritise their tasks and loyalties, choose to become active, ←xi | xii→and so on. Further, it is a given that they are different. They are different in terms of their ideologies, accumulated value systems, sense of belonging, assumptions, backgrounds, commitments, personal knowledge, socio-cultural experiences, and the like. They hold different worldviews and have different orientations. Not only does this influence their ideas, opinions, attitudes, understanding, reactions, but it influences their way of thinking and interpreting what is going on around them as well.

Translation, as a complex activity, has been studied from different perspectives and by adopting different approaches. Some scholars (Jakobson, 1958; Vinay & Darbelent, 1959/1995; Catford, 1965) believe that translation involves first and foremost two languages; others hold the view that it exists mainly between two cultures (Snell-Hornby, 1988; Bassnett & Lefevere, 1998); while yet others have emphasised the fact that language and culture are always closely intertwined (House, 2016, 2020). More recently, translation has been examined as a socially-regulated activity (Inghilleri, 2005; Hanna, 2006; Wolf & Alexandra, 2007; Almanna 2013, 2015), and as an act of re-narrating (Baker, 2006, 2010; Alhirthany, 2009; Al-Sharif, 2009; Harding 2012; Hijjo & Almanna, 2021).

It is worth emphasising that the raw material of any translation – whether it is an intralingual (within the same language), interlingual (between two languages), or inter-semiotic translation (converting what is non-verbal to verbal or the other way round) – is language. Language expresses cultures and societies, as well as revealing the users’ ideologies, feelings and opinions about something (appreciation) or somebody (judgement).

In an ideal world of peace, love, solidarity, equity and equality, language would be defined as a system of communication based on the use of words in a structured way (words are selected and used according to the grammar of the language, specifically syntax and morphology) and a conventional way (people agree on using these words according to their culture, at the symbolic level). However, this ideal world does not exist. Our world as we know it, unfortunately, is ridden with doubts, bad faith, conflict, and war, not to mention disinformation and fake news.

With this in mind, language cannot be defined as a system of communication only. Language is used by people who live in a particular society; follow certain norms; share, to a certain degree, the same set of beliefs; ←xii | xiii→belong to a certain group, and identify with the notions of the ‘self’ and ‘other’ accordingly. From this perspective, they interpret and narrate the good deeds conducted by the self and ignore or undermine good deeds conducted by the other, and similarly in the case with the bad deeds. As observed above, people as social agents and language users (be they, for instance, speakers, writers, translators, or trans-editors) have developed certain accumulated value systems, assumptions, beliefs, backgrounds, commitments, sense of belonging, personal knowledge, and socio-cultural experiences; therefore, realities can no longer be (re)presented without being manipulated: they are (re)framed, (re)narrated and (re)produced.

These developments have an inevitable impact on translation practitioners. Álvarez and Vidal (1996: 6) comment that “translators are constrained in many ways” by their own accumulated value systems, sense of belonging, “their feelings of superiority or inferiority towards the language in which they are writing the text being translated”, their original language as well as “what the dominant institutions and ideology expect of them”. This, however, only provides us with one of the two sides of this complex multidimensional dynamic process; another layer exists for the translator – the macro level, where multiple external environmental factors come into play.

In Translation Politicised & Politics Translated, following Spivak (2000), translation is seen as an approach utilised by the gatekeepers in the process of translation at its macro-level, such as translators, trans-editors, translation quality controllers, translation project managers, and the like, depending on the structure of the company, in order to promote a certain narrative, achieve a goal or pursue an agenda. Through language and the stories produced by virtue of language, people can understand who they are (the self), who other people are (the other); interpret and narrate what is going on around them; construct their identities and produce, reproduce, or shape their personal knowledge and experiences in life. Spivak (2000: 397) holds: “In my view, language may be one of many elements that allow us to make sense of things, of ourselves. Making sense of ourselves is what produces identity”.