From: patbh-AT-CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
Date: Sat, 04 Dec 1999 11:12:24 -0500
Subject: Re: Translators: The Wretched of the (Academic) World?



list members might be interested in an article that just came out:

johan heilbron, "towards a sociology of translation: book translations as a
cultural world-system," european journal of social theory 2, 4 (nov. 1999),
pp. 429-44.

emrah: let me know if you don't have a copy of the journal readily
available, and i'll make a copy.

elliot





At 06:06 AM 11/30/99 EET, you wrote:
>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
>
>
>______________________________________________________
>Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
>**********************************************************************
>Contributions: bourdieu-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>Commands: majordomo-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>Requests: bourdieu-approval-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>

**********************************************************************
Contributions: bourdieu-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Commands: majordomo-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Requests: bourdieu-approval-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu