Normativity and Resilience in Translation and Culture

Norms could be broadly defined as some kind of protection from change, a prescribed standard whose violation involves distortion and deformation, a transformation into something which the normal thing is not. Though derived from carpentry, the art of constructing rigid objects (“norma” is the Latin word for “carpenter’s square”), normativity has become a measure of things more evanescent than furniture—of ethical, social, aesthetic, or political judgments, of certain cultural norms which may seem to be universal only given that they survive the test of being transferred, or translated, to other cultures. If, as Yuri Lotman noted in his Universe of the Mind (1990), “the elementary act of thinking is translation” (143), then translation can be viewed as a crucial activity involved in the formation of cultures along with their concepts, conceptualizations, and norms. However, since translation, as a kind of dialogue, is inevitably asymmetrical and assumes only “a degree of invariancy” (Lotman 143), this degree seems to be an effect of culture’s resilience to the inadequacy and change involved in any kind of translation. This “rupturing of the norm,” wrote Lotman, “is what builds up the image of the truly essential but unrealized norm” (90).

Thus, normativity is both a matter of representation and something that may be called a feature of the world, the latter possibility figuring as an unrealizable effect of broadly understood translation which simultaneously protects and disrupts it. Looking at the ideas of norm and normativity in culture in the context of translation allows us to think about various locations of what may be called normative “ought” statements, sometimes implicitly dictating our choices of words and ideas, the quiet demands of discourse to retain norms despite various perturbations. These “ought” statements of normativity, of retaining the norm, seem to be an important aspect of the management of resistance, whose significant function is, as Judith Butler claims in Vulnerability in Resistance (2016), the concealment of destitution (8). The “ought” of resilience has become not only the desired good of neoliberalism but also, as she puts it, “a force to be reckoned within the realm of hegemonic ethics of and truths about the self” (Butler, Vulnerability 53). The essays gathered in this collection aim to locate the whereabouts of such “ought” statements, the teachings of imaginary security and certainty consisting in the ability to jump into prior shape.

Social, cultural, economic, and, inevitably, ethical framings of both normativity and resilience reveal themselves as a concern here, as does the impact of their various manifestations on individuals, groups, systems, and praxes. Even when considered separately, both concepts may be viewed as highly ambiguous, but it is nonetheless crucial to investigate their interconnectedness as norms and the resulting expectations that shape the response of individuals and communities to uncertainty and change. For instance, when tied to the cultural virtue of self-reliance or recognized as one’s ability to adapt to difficult circumstances, the concept of resilience may provoke a sense of shame in vulnerable individuals unable to rebound as soon or as fully as expected. Importantly, when conceived as a mix of personal features, the concept of resilience may ignore broader systemic contexts that determine the ability to respond to adversity. Consequently, the relationship between normativity and resilience grows increasingly problematic as the authors of the essays collected in this volume probe the resilience of norms, resilience as a means to withstand the norm or resilience as a norm.

Confronting various definitions of the notion in her chapter “‘Imagining Otherwise’: Questioning Resilience and Normativity in Selected Disability Drama,” Edyta Lorek-Jezińska elaborates on the “notorious ambiguity” of resilience and places it in the context of disability studies. Focusing on John Belluso’s Gretty Good Time (1997) and Charles L. Mee’s A Summer Evening in Des Moines (2006), her analysis of the works of these American playwrights with disabilities reveals the distinct approaches that they offer to the issues of normativity and resilience and, as Lorek-Jezińska states, how they “redefine the aspects of resilience[,] … call[ing] for a different kind of social and artistic imagination that contains and foregrounds what the system tries to suppress or hide.”

In Giorgia Scribellito’s “Rules, Norms, and Transgressions in Caribbean American Women’s Writings: A Reconceptualization of American (Minority) Identity,” the author discusses bildungsroman narratives of Caribbean American women, who often deal with “imposed identities,” for example, those of “woman” and “person of colour.” By comparing selected coming-of-age writings of female authors with the works of their male counterparts, Scribellito identifies key features of the Caribbean American bildungsroman. In doing so, she also highlights what sets them apart, thus presenting the norms and transgressions that can be observed in the output of American women writers of Caribbean descent.

Przemysław Uściński’s “Queering Public Sphere: Identity as Vulnerable Translation” also addresses the topic of identity. While formulating his response to the question of whether or not one can be queer “in public” without “normalizing queer life,” Uściński draws upon identity politics, suggesting that it “may provide provisional strategic translations of vulnerability into political categories, needed for a queer resistance to normative and epistemological closure.” In his concluding remarks, Uściński refers to Ashley J. Bohrer’s discussion of solidarity as translation, viewing “a translation of vulnerability” as “that [which] underlines the possibility of solidarity.”

In her chapter entitled “Soviet Female Translators in the Adoption and Promotion of Translation Norms,” Natalia Kamovnikova approaches the issue of normativity through William Labov’s gender paradox and Gideon Toury’s distinction between preliminary and operational norms. She discusses the translation norms adopted by a group of Soviet female translators headed by Ivan Kashkin. By conforming to the state’s cultural policy, the group established themselves as leading literary translation specialists. Their high status enabled them to gradually introduce new works of fiction into the Soviet literary landscape. In Kamovnikova’s words, “[c]hanges to the norm of selection … proved to be successful only after … [the group] had secured its reputation by an outstanding number of successful and widely read publications.”

In “Conversations with Friends: A Comparative Analysis of Feminist Practices in Spanish and Danish Contemporary Literary Translation,” Neus Casanova Vico also examines the translation practices of female translators, shifting her attention to feminist translation and ways to achieve a greater degree of gender neutrality by breaking away from the male-as-norm principle. Her work adds to the discussion on gender, language, and translation by analyzing the Danish and Spanish versions of Sally Rooney’s 2017 novel entitled Conversations with Friends. Casanova Vico concludes that the Danish and Spanish literary industries need to be more mindful, stating that the latter should “adopt more feminist practices dedicated to making the general public aware of the patriarchal structures embedded in … [the Spanish] language.”

Lada Kolomiyets’s “Cultural Translation in Michael Naydan’s novel Seven Signs of the Lion” analyzes Michael Naydan’s 2016 novel Seven Signs of the Lion, which she describes as “a book on cultural translation[,] … discovery, … [and] communicating personal stories across cultural differences.” Infusing the narration with Ukrainian words and cultural elements, the narrator acts as an intermediary, offering a distinct portrayal of Lviv and its inhabitants thanks to the main character’s bicultural background. Later in her analysis, Kolomiyets discusses several strategies Mariana Prokopovych adopted when translating Naydan’s novel into Ukrainian, including domestication, foreignization, and omission.

In “Oral Traditions in World Literature: Analysing the Bhagavadagītā and the Gināns World Literature and the Oral Tradition,” Semina S. Halani argues for the inclusion of not only the Bhagavadagītā but also the gināns in the world literature canon. The former is more likely to be recognized as belonging to world literature, having been translated into other languages, including English, and having achieved more circulation as a result. However, there is another criterion that the author believes should be taken into consideration apart from a text’s circulation, namely its impact on the world. According to Halani, the gināns’ “themes, stories, and motifs are relevant even today,” and their “multi-cultural nature … makes them a stronger candidate to be considered in the world literary canon.”

Devoted to the translation of proper nouns in children’s literature, Aneta Wielgosz’s “Personal Names in Translated Children’s Literature: A Translational Norm in Three Polish Editions of Gianni Rodari’s Favole al telefono” looks into how the names of selected characters featured in Gianni Rodari’s Favole al telefono (1962) were rendered into the Polish language, taking into account the book’s 1967, 1996, and 2012 Polish editions. Wielgosz discusses several key factors that may influence the translator’s decision on whether or not to translocate or transpose a proper noun. Her comparative analysis allows for a better understanding of translation norms, showing how norms may change and why they may be violated when translating proper nouns in children’s literature.

Anna Popławska’s text explores the topic of translation and its relationship with normativity in the context of literary translation into Polish. Through an examination of readers’ expectations for a translation to faithfully convey the source text while also reading well in the target language, it highlights the challenges of achieving both goals and the impact of changing norms in translation. Popławska focuses on two translations of Anne of Green Gables into Polish: the earliest translation by Rozalia Bernstein in 1911 and the recent translation by Anna Bańkowska in 2022. The differences between them raise questions about the normative aspects of translation and whether the changes reflect shifts in translation norms over time.

Silvia Vincenza D’Orazio’s “Interpretation, Violation, and Creative Translation in the Theatre of Leopold Jessner” investigates Leopold Jessner’s directorial work and the significance of creative translation. More specifically, D’Orazio discusses Jessner’s Hamlet, a production that garnered both praise and criticism from his contemporaries. Viewing himself as a creative director, Jessner sought ways to invigorate classic texts, believing that, as D’Orazio notes, “fixed and canonical interpretations served no purpose.” His 1926 production of Hamlet offered a new reading of William Shakespeare’s play, one that departed from prevailing interpretations by focusing on its political dimension.