From: "Emrah Goker" <emrah_goker-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Translators: The Wretched of the (Academic) World? 
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1999 06:06:47 EET


Hi Debbie!

Well, invoking good old Durkheim's analysis of Church, Weber's supplement of 
"domination rationalized", and the "field analysis" (of course), there you 
go! An exciting area of research! I think what you say about the practice of 
translation being poorly awarded within the academic and publishing field is 
very correct. From what I know in my country, I can say that except a few 
"fast" and "good" translators (who have M.A. or Ph.D. degrees but who are 
employed in the publishing-journalism sector, not in the university), the 
profits from the practice is equivalent to the profits of "deskilled manual 
labor". Most translators are not academics in Turkey, and if they are, they 
are from "less developed" universities, with lower budgets, located in 
smaller provinces, doing the job only for the few extra bucks that will come 
in handy.

>Is this because translators don't get "credit" for translating, in addition
>to not being paid well?  For instance, are translators also academics who
>must publish research & theory in order to achieve (and now in the US
>maintain) tenure?
>

The analysis also requires an international perspective, as the "circulation 
of academic goods" has become a global (and imperialist, reminding the 
recent article by Bourdieu and Wacquant, "The Cunning of Imperialist 
Reason", TC&S, 16-1, Feb. 1999) process, and a process dominantly *from* the 
Euro-American world *to* peripheral markets. The principles of selection of 
the material to be translated may not be that innocent. Next comes the power 
(and the nature of interests) held by publishing companies active in the 
peripheral markets. For example, in the case of one company owned by a giant 
bank (which owned by a giant Turkish corporation), the economic capital 
received from the translation of the works of Hayek and a number of other 
worshippers of market liberalism is relatively high (and still, 
intellectually, no profits - you might be blamed for promoting neoliberalism 
in leftist academic circles, but no Turkish liberal academic applauds the 
translator). On the other hand, there are publishing companies, owned by 
ex-1968 radicals, which have attracted a number of post-Marxist, 
left-liberal or social democratic intellectuals as employees, rarely book 
authors and sometimes translators (when it comes to the translation of Big 
Men, like Habermas or Derrida, agents with higher intellectual capital do 
the job, the pay is still very low). In that case, the choice of the 
material is important: Something fashionable, leftish, with a touch of 
post-this post-that and gotcha! For the translator, the profit is more 
intellectual: "I have translated Derrida!" Even for the company, economic 
returns may not be the motive, given the fact that in Turkey, most purely 
academic translations (related to social science, philosophy, etc.) do not 
sell above 5000 (even this number might be boosted!).

So in the case of almost all book companies publishing "intellectual" stuff 
(social scientific or humanities translations) in Turkey, translation has 
the function of consecrating the Church by adding more Gospels to its armory 
of symbolic capital, in which you can find

-Archbishops from political science, history, sociology, philosophy or 
comparative literature, employed in prestigious state universities or 
private universities (where you are paid loads of money, in dollars, not 
Turkish liras);

-Bishops from the journals and papers outside the academic field, sometimes 
lesser members of the university, or retired, or holding Ph.D.s but residing 
in the journalistic field for "fun and profit", and also the high-rank 
employees inside the book companies, the once-radicals;

-Ordinary priests and scribes, hopeless members of the left-liberal 
intelligentsia who read and understand the Gospels, but are content to be 
disinterested, publishing not so often, getting angry at capitalism and at 
the state from time to time, but too concerned about the occupational 
position they have secured within the university;

-Lots of to-be-clerics, the sympathetic left-liberal mass of graduate and 
undergraduate students of the social sciences, enjoying to cite Baudrillard 
after they watch the movie *Matrix*, invoking 
"but-Foucault-is-a-radical-look-even-a-gay" or 
"yet-Laclau-is-still-socialist" kind of defenses if they are not busy 
banishing reason and science to the "this-worldy" domain of the "profane", 
getting confused but trying not to give away when they read "The Condition 
of Postmodernity" just after "The Postmodern Condition". Well, most 
translators are from this circle. The practical logic they have embodied, I 
speculate, does not equip them to question the lack of rewards in the 
translating enterprise. Besides, most need the money, and given the flexible 
nature of the labor required, given most of them are students in 
universities where the language of education is English, the job is welcome.

On the other hand, I am unable to speculate on why the working conditions 
for translators, both symbolically and materially, are not being bettered by 
book companies, who should be aware of the increasing numbers of "bad" 
translations thrown into circulation. I suspect the answer is more 
complicated than "Less production costs, more profits". For one thing, 
coming immediately to my mind, there is not a reliable feed-back system: For 
example, two of the three Turkish translations of Bourdieu ("Questions of 
Sociology" and "Practical Reason", the latter is translated as "Practical 
Causes"!)are made by the same sympathetic academic, and there were no other 
persons qualified to read, understand, and correct the translations, which 
turned out to be very bad ones. It is the same with Foucault translations. I 
don't know if this applies to the American case.

>I don't get paid to publish articles, and from what I understand, most
>books don't pay all that well either.  Yet I write and publish to keep my
>job, right?

I would add that there might be certain other motivations on which academics 
do not normally reflect. A Shi'ite hitting his back with an iron chain to 
mourn for some religious figure murdered by infidels some fifteen centuries 
ago does not consciously think about the symbolic profits of his action. As 
the Durkheimians posited years ago, sacrifice/suffering qualifies the 
community. I guess the logic of academic sacrifices is homological. Can you 
say that you have chosen the career for mere economic benefits?

Time to shut up for me.

Best regards,

Emrah

>If this is the case for translators, I can see why there would not be a
>huge motivation to translate.
>
>What field(s) does this kind of work fall into?
>
>Debbie


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