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BOOK REVIEWSElbieta Wòjcik-Leese a

a Jagiellonian University, Krakòw, Poland

Online Publication Date: 15 March 2007

To cite this Article Wòjcik-Leese, Elbieta(2007)'BOOK REVIEWS',Perspectives,15:1,66 — 67

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Book Reviews

Translation and Conflict: A Narrative AccountMona Baker. London: Routledge, 2006. Pp. 208. ISBN 10: 0-415-38396-X (pbk):£20. ISBN 10: 0-415-38395-1 (hbk): £70. ISBN 10: 0-203-09991-5 (E-book): £20.

Since 1992, Professor Mona Baker from the Centre for Translation andIntercultural Studies at the University of Manchester has produced severalnotable works on translation � including In Other Words: A Coursebook onTranslation (1992) and the Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (chiefeditor, 1998) � which have exerted a tremendous influence on those interestedin translation studies. Mona Baker’s latest publication, Translation and Conflict:A Narrative Account (2006), rigorously examines the relation between transla-tion, power and conflict from a narrative perspective and may constitute yetanother turning point in Translation Studies. This groundbreaking volumedemonstrates that translation is never merely a by-product of social andpolitical developments, but a part of the institution of war, and examines therole played by translators and interpreters in mediating conflict and resistingthe narratives that create the intellectual and moral environment for violentconflict. Drawing on narrative theory and using numerous examples fromhistorical as well as contemporary conflicts, the author provides an originaland coherent model of analysis that pays equal attention to the context of thecirculation of narratives in translation, to translation and interpreting, and topolitical questions of dominance and resistance.

This book includes seven chapters. In Chapters 1 and 2, the author gives abrief introduction of narrative theory particularly suited to investigating theway in which translators and interpreters function in situations of conflict. Shepoints out the advantages of narrative theory to account for the interplaybetween translation, power and conflict. Mona Baker draws on the notion ofnarrative as elaborated in social and communication theory, rather than innarratology or linguistics, to explore the way in which translation andinterpreting participate in these processes. Narratives, therefore, are under-stood as dynamic and open entities. According to this narrative theory,narratives not only represent social reality, but also constitute crucial means ofgenerating, sustaining and negotiating conflict at all levels of social organisa-tion. In view of the narrative perspective, the author discusses the politicalimport of narratives, the interaction of resistance and dominance evident inthe way narratives are illustrated and received, and the intimate relationsbetween translation and political factors.

In Chapter 3, Mona Baker discusses four types of narrative (ontologicalnarratives, public narratives, conceptual or disciplinary narratives and meta-narratives) and the way in which translators and interpreters mediate theircirculation in society. Chapters 4 and 5 provide a profound and comprehensiveanalysis of the typology and features of narrativity, namely, the core features oftemporality, relationality, causal emplotment and selective appropriation, andthe supplementary features of particularity, genericness, normativeness and

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narrative accrual. The discussion of typology and features makes us furtherunderstand the complex ways in which narrativity mediates our experience ofthe world and its potential application in translation studies.

In Chapter 6, the author combines the narrative theory and translationstudies by way of the notion of frame as elaborated in the work of Goffmanand the literature on social movements, focusing on four key strategiesfor translators, interpreters and other agents to accentuate, undermine ormodify aspects of the narratives encoded in the source text or utterance,namely, ‘temporal and spatial framing’, ‘framing through selective appropria-tion’, ‘framing by labeling’ and ‘repositioning of participants’. She introducesthe two important concepts of ‘frame ambiguity’ and ‘frame space’ and pointsout that the different and conflicting international parties can successfullyachieve their political purposes by consciously using various strategiesmentioned above, and that as translators are not neutral, they will adoptappropriate strategies to achieve their communicative purpose according todifferent contexts. Among the four strategies, Mona Baker highlights ‘framingthrough selective appropriation’ and ‘repositioning of participants’ andillustrates her points with a lot of examples. For example, in discussing theformer strategy, she explains how in The Slave-King (1833), the first Englishtranslation of Victor Hugo’s novel Bug-Jargal (1826), with its troublinglyambiguous portrayal of slavery, slavery is now modified into a dastardlyinstitution in need of eradication.

In Chapter 7, Mona Baker gives an insightful analysis and appreciation ofWalter Fisher’s influential narrative paradigm and points out its advantages: itallows us to assess a narrative elaborated in a single text as well as diffusenarratives that have to be pieced together from a variety of sources and media;it can also be used to assess any narrative: ontological, public or conceptual,whether elaborated by an individual or an institution. The author concludeswith a critical review of translation studies from a narrative perspective andpredicts the future development of this paradigm.

The main features of this book are as follows. (1) It successfully gives acritical theoretical analysis, with rich corpus-based studies. (2) Many vividpictures and fresh examples are used and illustrated in the book. (3)Suggestions for further reading are included at the end of each chapter so asto provide much more useful materials for those interested in translationstudies, intercultural studies, sociology and history. (4) The book cover is soilluminating that it attracts a lot of readers.

Equipped with all the above-mentioned qualities, this book is all in all avery useful and handy reference for learners and researchers interested in bothcross-cultural studies and translation studies. Therefore, it is stronglyrecommended.

doi: 10.2167/pstb001.0 Fan MinSchool of Foreign Languages and Literature

Shandong University, China

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Children’s Literature in Translation: Challenges and StrategiesJan Van Coillie and Walter P. Verschueren (eds). Manchester: St JeromePublishing, 2006. Pp. 190. ISBN 1-900650-88-6 (pbk): £22.50.

For children who do not master foreign languages, translations are the solemeans of entering into genuine contact with foreign literatures and cultures.Owing to translators’ efforts, ‘children all over the world can step through themagical looking-glass and venture into the beguiling world of Andersen’sfairy tales and Alice’s unexpected, mind-boggling Wonderland, or can indulgein the charmingly anarchistic fabrications of Pippi Longstocking, and � morerecently � the thrilling, often spine-chilling, universe of Harry Potter’ (p. v).Today translating for children is increasingly recognised as a literary challengein its own right, because translators are not only mediators who facilitate thenegotiating ‘dialogue’ between source text and target audience, but also oneswho hold a fragile, unstable middle position between the social forces that actupon them, their own interpretation of the source text and their assessment ofthe target audience; translators mediate, but to an important extent they alsoshape the image that young readers or listeners will have of the translatedwork.

Children’s Literature in Translation: Challenges and Strategies is of great valuebecause it tackles a long-neglected subfield of literary translation. It hasendeavoured to explore the various challenges posed by the paradigmatic shiftin research � its focus shifting from the source text to the target text � while atthe same time highlighting some of the strategies that translators can and dofollow when faced with challenges such as the impact of translational norms,the choice between foreignising and domesticating translation, and the dualaudience (children and adults). Translating for children is no less demandingthan translating ‘serious’ (adult) literature, and very often the creative, playfuluse of language is even more challenging as it requires a special empathy withthe imaginative world of the child. Luckily, we now witness a significantgrowth in scholarly interest as well as the visibility gained by translators ofchildren’s literature.

The volume comprises 11 articles. The opening essay ‘The TranslatorRevealed’ reviews historical and contemporary prefaces to translated chil-dren’s books published in the UK. By analysing the prefaces by MaryWollstonecraft, Mary Howitt, Joan Aiken and Ann Lawson Lucas, GillianLathey concludes that, viewed historically, translators’ prefaces offer rareinsights into the selection of texts for translation, developments in translationpractices and changes in the image of the child reader. Therefore, she ends heressay with emphasising the significance of the translator’s position within thehistory of British children’s literature, for the reason that ‘there is theopportunity to exercise choice in the selection of texts for translation’ and‘there is considerable evidence in these prefaces that translators are active andcreative mediators’ (p. 16), thus trying to seek the voices of as many of theselost translators as possible and bring them to attention.

The second essay, Rita Ghesquiere’s ‘Why Does Children’s Literature NeedTranslation?’, also working from a historical perspective, deals with how � in apolysystemic context � translations have helped children’s literature to fulfil a

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basic role in the establishment of literary canons. It reviews the present-daysituation of children’s literature worldwide and discusses commercialisationand the dominance of Westernised books in order to answer the questionwhether the import of Western books is a hindrance to the development ofnative (non-Western) children’s literatures.

Riitta Oittinen’s ‘No Innocent Act: On the Ethics of Translating for Children’states that translating may be defined as rereading and rewriting for targetaudiences, and translating for children inevitably uses the domesticatingstrategy reflecting the ethics, values and norms of a given society that liedormant in the translator’s personal child(hood) image.

In her ‘Flying High � Translation of Children’s Literature in East Germany’,Gaby Thomson-Wohlgemut discusses how children’s books were selected soas to play a role in the creation of an ideal socialist society and how thetranslated books enjoyed a remarkably high status because of their importantfunction in educating the masses.

Vanessa Joosen, in her ‘From Breaktime to Postcards: How Aidan ChambersGoes (or Does Not Go) Dutch’, by analysing in depth the Dutch translations ofthe two novels, Breaktime and Postcards From No Man’s Land, draws ourattention to the shift from focusing on Chambers’ (one of the most populartranslated authors of adolescent fiction in Belgium and the Netherlands) use oftaboo language to a greater awareness of his stylistic complexity (a mixture ofDutch and English), a particular challenge to the translator.

Isabelle Desmidt’s ‘A Prototypical Approach within Descriptive TranslationStudies? Colliding Norms in Translated Children’s Literature’ investigates towhat extent a prototypical approach may help to define translation in anadequate way (both descriptive and specific), departing from Chesterman’sDefault Prototype Concept. She calls for an adjustment or refinement ofChesterman’s model, as she believes that children’s literature should betranslated in a specific way. Nevertheless she concludes that the prototypeapproach promises to remain a valuable future tool for translation studies.

The next two essays state that traditionally, most translators of children’sliterature held the belief that the source text should be adapted to the targetculture in order to guarantee children readers a sufficient degree ofrecognisability and empathy. But today more and more translators choose toretain a degree of ‘foreignness’ in their translations because they want to bringchildren into contact with other cultures. In the essay ‘Translating CulturalIntertextuality in Children’s Literature’, Belen Gonzalez-Cascallana exploresculture-bound problems in translating children’s literature by focusing on thehandling of cultural intertextuality in the Spanish translations of contempor-ary British children’s fantasy books. The author demonstrates that thetranslations discussed do not fully favour either domestication or foreign-isation of source text features because while the translator’s aim is to ‘stayclose to the source text and to expose the target child audience to theexperience of the foreign text’ (p. 108), in other ways the translator does showa concern for the target readers’ comprehension and their ability to enjoy thepresence of intertextuality. By applying the polysystem theory to studying thestrategies found in an English and Spanish translation of a German youthnovel, Isabel Pascua-Febles’ ‘Translating Cultural References: The Language of

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Young People in Literary Texts’ focuses on social and educational conventionsand the way different translators address young readers through juvenileexpressions and cultural markers such as diastratic and diaphasic varieties.

In ‘Character Names in Translation’, Jan Van Coillie, by investigating thetranslation of personal names from a functional perspective, discusses how thetranslators’ choices can cause texts to function differently (via shifts occurringin their informative, educational, emotional, entertaining and creative func-tion). His study also sheds a different light on the concept of functionalequivalence, because factors other than text and translator ‘can have an impacton the translation of personal names’ (p. 136).

The last two essays explore the ambivalent audience (young and adultreaders). Anette Øster’s ‘Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales in Translation’examines two English translations of Andersen’s fairy tales and shows howthey are stripped of their double audience: not only are sexual overtones andirony removed, but also their richness of detail and linguistic fitness are lost �something at odds with the original, as Andersen himself was well aware ofhis double audience. In their paper, ‘Dual Readership and Hidden Subtexts inChildren’s Literature’, Mette Rudvin and Francesca Orlati, by examining thetranslations of Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories into Norwegianand Italian, show that this double orientation (Rushdie’s novel can be readboth as a fairy tale for children and as a political critique aimed at an adultreadership) results in complex translation strategies. This raises a series ofinteresting translation issues such as ‘the micro-structural co-ordination ofculture specificities, the macro-structural marketing policies dictating thetranslating strategies of the political subcontext through metaphor’ (p. 157),the status of the target reader, and the place of translators and translationswithin the polysystem and the wider social system.

The book perfectly bridges the gap between theory and practice, whichmakes its arguments even more convincing. It has benefited greatly fromtheoretical developments in the fields of literary and translation studies, suchas Itamar Even-Zohar’s polysystem theory, Gideon Toury’s concept of normsof translational behaviour, Lawrence Venuti’s concept of the translator’s(in)visibility and of foreignising and domesticating translations, Chesterman’sprototypical approach and the concept of the child(hood) image. And itapplies the theories to such topics as the ethics of translating for children, theimportance of child(hood) images, the ‘revelation’ of the translator in prefaces,the role of translated children’s books in the establishment of literary canons,the status of translations in former East Germany, questions of taboo andcensorship in the translation of adolescent novels, the collision of norms indifferent translations of a Swedish children’s classic, the handling of ‘culturalintertextuality’ in the Spanish translations of contemporary British fantasybooks, strategies for translating cultural markers such as juvenile expressions,functional shifts caused by different translation strategies dealing withcharacter names, and complex translation strategies used in dealing with thedual audience in Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tales and in SalmanRushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories.

What impresses me most is that 10 out of the 12 authors are female, whichposes an interesting question: why are so many women engaged in studying

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and translating children’s literature? To me, it might be due to their family rolein society, their psychological makeup and their great maternal love forchildren.

The list of contributors at the end of the book not only offers their academicbackground; it is also helpful for cross-national communication amongtranslation researchers and practitioners.

Now we are very interested in raising the translator’s status, but how? Inthis book the essay ‘Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales in Translation’ iswritten by Anette Øster (in Danish) and translated by Don Bartlett. However,the author’s name is put at the beginning of the essay and the translator’s atthe end. I don’t think it appropriate to treat the author and the translatordifferently. I maintain that we translators or translation researchers ourselvesshould be the first to put authors and translators in the same place becausethey are of the same importance. If even we don’t do this, why should others? Ipropose that both the author’s and the translator’s names should be placed atthe beginning of the essay in order to demonstrate their equal status. Thejournals and books published in China such as Chinese Translators’ Journal set agood example in this respect.

In conclusion, the anthology under review is extremely useful; it is one ofthe few books on children’s literature in translation, and it reflects the recentdevelopments in this special field. It offers excellent guidance and orientationto students of children’s literature in translation, and although its essaysexplore children’s literature in translation in a Western context, it is also ofgreat significance in an international context.

doi: 10.2167/pstb002.0 Xu JianzhongCollege of Foreign Languages

Tianjin University of Technology, China

The Discourse of Court Interpreting: Discourse Practices of the Law, theWitness and the InterpreterSandra Beatriz Hale. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2004. Pp.xviii�265. Europe: ISBN 90 272 1658 4; USA: ISBN 1 58811 517 8 (hbk): t105/US$126.

The book under review deals with one of the most topical present-day fields ofTranslation Studies, i.e. the scholarly issues of court interpreting discourse. Thehypothesis underlying the author’s study is that ‘interpreters are mostlyconcerned with maintaining accuracy of content alone, the ‘‘what’’ and notthe ‘‘how’’’ (p. 238). This hypothesis has determined the aim of the book, whichis seen in the analysis of the complex relationship between form and functionwithin the context of interpreter-mediated speech (p. 7). Hence, the main focusof the monograph is the interpreting process delivery phase that, as the authorstates, ‘has been perhaps the most neglected one in the study and training’ (p. 5).

The structure of the book is in concordance with the above aim and focusand is as follows: Chapter 1. Court Interpreting: The Main Issues; Chapter 2.Historical Overview of Court Interpreting in Australia; Chapter 3. CourtroomQuestioning and the Interpreter; Chapter 4. The Use of Discourse Markers in

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Courtroom Questions; Chapter 5. The Style of the Spanish Speaking Witnesses’Answers and the Interpreters’ Renditions; Chapter 6. Control of the Court-room; Chapter 7. The Interpreters’ Response; Chapter 8. Conclusions. Themonograph is prefaced by Acknowledgements and Introduction, and com-pleted by Notes, References and Index.

I definitely feel it should be noted to the author’s credit that one of the mostsuccessful parts is about the history of court interpreting in Australia. It wouldhave been to still better advantage if Sandra Beatriz Hale made generalreferences to the worldwide history of court interpreting, since as we allunderstand, it originated in 1945. This history is far from being too long andtoo complicated and there are initial facts really worth mentioning. However,even though the author confines herself to the history of interpreting inAustralia, the chapter is informative and relevant. So, the first governmentinterpreter service in Australia dates back to 1954, and since that time it hasevolved to enact legislation on a person’s rights to the services of an interpreterin the states of Victoria and South Australia, while in other jurisdictions it isthe presiding judicial officer who decides whether an interpreter is needed ornot (Report on a National Language Policy (1984: 39) as quoted in Hale: 23). Themost blossoming years for the interpreting trade were the 1980s, when thestates had an institution that offered a Bachelor’s degree in the field. Atpresent, only the University of Western Sydney offers degrees in legalinterpreting � in nine languages (Hale: 26).

The author points out that the study was conducted with 13 English�Spanish interpreted court hearings during the years 1993�1996. The figure of13 hearings seems sufficient to arrive at a number of scholarly conclusions, oneof the interesting being that tag questions are one of the things that causeinterpreters most difficulty. The data show that interpreters omit the tag53.12% of the time. The explanation is found in a wider range of tags inEnglish as compared to Spanish, where tags are the invariant tag questions,such as (if translated into English) Isn’t that right? Right? True? Is it true? Is itcorrect? (pp. 44, 46). Another reason may be that not every rendition canmaintain the same pragmatic force as the given source language tag. Forexample, to say ‘You saw him by accident, did you?’ is not the same as ‘Yousaw him by accident, true?’ According to Hale, ‘the first one is rectifying afalse prior belief’ while ‘the second one is stating what the speaker believes tobe the case and asking for ratification of the same’ (p. 51). Still another problemis checking tags believed to be the most aggressive. When said with a fallingintonation they present a strong assumption and expect an answer that agreeswith that assumption (p. 52).

Worthwhile information is provided concerning such discourse markers as‘well’, ‘see’ and ‘now’. The author emphasises that the use of these markersvaries according to the type of discourse: whether they appear in examination-in-chief or cross-examination. In examination-in-chief, they are used tomaintain control of the flow of information and mark progression in thestory. In cross-examination, they are used as markers of argumentation andconfrontation that initiate disagreements or challenges (pp. 85, 86).

The author also tackles psycholinguistic issues when she discusses the styleof the Spanish-speaking witnesses’ answers and the interpreters’ renditions. It

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is assumed that there is a strong correlation between how people speak andhow they impress their listeners in terms of their social status, personality,intelligence, trustworthiness and competence. Here she studies hesitations,repetitions, backtracking, pauses and hedges as well as grammatical errors incourt interpreting discourse. Her data contain 1379 answers with a totalnumber of 15,053 Spanish words (pp. 87, 95, 96). Hale concludes that theinterpreted English shows a higher frequency of hesitations and grammaticalerrors, while there are fewer repetitions, backtrackings, pauses and hedges inthe interpreted variant than in the original Spanish discourse. (I should like tomention right here that after all, repetitions, errors, backtrackings, etc. are allabout hesitation: a speaker would not backtrack or make an understatement orwhatsoever in case he/she were confident of the subject in case. So the chapteris positively about hesitations only, which should have been used as anumbrella term.) Moreover, the author writes that interpreters tend toconstantly alter witnesses’ speech styles in their interpretations (p. 156).

A challenging chapter is about how to keep power and control in thecourtroom. If we accept the author’s approach, we should follow the followingpath: ‘a person’s power lies in his/her ability to control his/her own actions,and to control the actions of others, despite resistance. This book deals with thecontext of the courtroom, where there are clearly powerful and powerlessparticipants’ (p. 159), the former being the lawyers and the bench who can askquestions and control the information, whereas the latter are witnesses, whomust answer the question without digressing from the relevant themes(Atkinson & Drew 1979; Merry, 1990; Drew, 1992 as quoted in Hale: 160).However, this seems to be the field of psychology rather than TranslationStudies or linguistics, although Hale states that ‘linguistic control has beensaid to be one important aspect of exercising power over others’ (Morris, 1949;Foucault, 1977; Pondy, 1978; Bourdieu, 1991 as quoted in Hale: 159). Of course,we cannot do without the language in many fields, like philosophy, philology,psychiatry, legal studies and psychology. Still, such issues are psychology, withlinguistics as a runner-up there. As if to support my line, the author goes on tosay that the ‘general rule is for all directive speech acts to originate with thepowerful participants of the courtroom’ (p. 162). However, the chapterdiscloses that ‘although control is mostly held by the counsel, it sometimesshifts to the witness, to the interpreter and to the magistrate. Such power shiftswere mostly a consequence of witness initiative and sometimes produced bythe presence of the interpreter’ � whose presence may sometimes interferewith the counsel’s strategies (p. 210).

The author then tries to support her findings in an experimental part whereshe consults a group of interpreters through a questionnaire on the main issuesof her book, for example interpreter renditions of ‘now’, ‘you see’, ‘well’, tagquestions, etc. Hale’s conclusion at this part is as follows: the majority ofrespondents claim witnesses’ incoherence and colloquial speech to be the maincause of difficulty in interpreting. Generally, the results of the survey provedmore positive than those of the authentic courtroom hearings (pp. 232�233).

As I have quoted above, the author’s two main questions are ‘what’ and‘how’. So a logical follow-up will be the big question ‘why’. I often ask thisquestion which sounds irritating to some authors, for whatever reason.

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Anyway, I ask it to see what is there in the background that made the bookpossible, for one thing. For another (and that is what I should like to ask ofSandra Beatriz Hale), why has she thought it appropriate to put within onevolume topics that should rather go in different books? The major part of thebook is about ‘a micro analysis of questions and answers taken from LocalCourt hearings’ (p. 211). Fine, so let the monograph be on this theme, entitled‘Questions, Markers and Hesitations in Court Interpreting’. That would bequite suitable for the contents, as ‘The Discourse of Court Interpreting’followed by the subtitle ‘Discourse Practices of the Law, the Witness and theInterpreter’ is too general. The author deals with a very small part of the saiddiscourse; this book is not about the whole linguistic practice of lawmakingand justice, as the author’s title may suggest.

My second ‘why’ � or, to use the author’s term, my hesitation � is aboutpsycholinguistic and psychological issues discussed in the book. I supposethey deserve a separate volume on what people do in court to control thesituation. The methodology of the monograph the way it is can be defined aseclectic, as it is a combination of Translation Studies methods and those oflinguistics, culture, psycholinguistics and even psychology. These are all verydifferent fields enjoying their own research topics, aims, tasks and methods.

However, these comments are merely trifles. The book has impressed me asa substantial study of courtroom interpreting practices by a knowledgeablespecialist.

doi: 10.2167/pstb003.0 Vladimir KhairoullineUfa, Russia

Proust’s EnglishDaniel Karlin. London: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. 229. ISBN 0-19-925688-4 (hbk): £27, US$45. ISBN 0-19-925689-1 (pbk): £15.

Charming, erudite, ingenious, this focused examination of A la recherche dutemps perdu can expect an appreciative, but highly limited, audience. WhatKarlin has done is look for echoes of English as exemplified by both the chicand chi-chi Anglomania in the Ile-de-France from 1870 to 1917. Only readerswho already know the novel in its entirety well can savour the intricacies andimbrications of anglophile taste and expressions, usually in French disguise.

After all, neither Proust nor his persona Marcel knew English. Indeed, whencharacters speak so that ‘Marcel’ will not understand them, they switch toEnglish, and their dialogue goes unrecorded. ‘Marcel’ also continually mocksthe semi-literate use of French by the continental staff at Balbec or among ruralFrench getting acclimated to Paris slang. ‘Marcel’ makes a trip to Venice, butnone of his travel fantasies involve London. Moreover, it is well documentedthat Proust’s translations of Ruskin relied heavily on his mother’s and MarieNordlinger’s rough drafts.

Nonetheless, Karlin, who tackles the ops stereoscopically, using theMoncrieff-Mayor-Enright translations for Random House vis-a-vis the TadiePleiade edition, shows that Proust’s characterisations and milieus for whichhis ear was unerring, made English a credible subtext that pierces the surface

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text with intrusions like ‘home’ and ‘fishing for compliments’. The entry ofeach Anglicism into French is fastidiously traced.

Karlin’s delight in deconstructionist etymologising is a further demonstra-tion that stereoscopic reading and deconstruction form a felicitous critical ploy.As for the semantic spaces between the French and the English, these appear iningenious backtracking that makes English not only a source of ‘mots retrouves’,but also � despite vociferous calls for an uncontaminated French � a source forlanguage enrichment.

doi: 10.2167/pstb004.0 Marilyn Gaddis RoseState University of New York at Binghamton, USA

If This Be Treason. Translation and its Dyscontents. A MemoirGregory Rabassa. New York: New Directions, 2005. Pp. 192. ISBN 0-8112-1619-5(cloth). US$21.95.

If we hope to pick up tricks of the trade from ‘the best Latin American writerin the English language’, as Gabriel Garcıa Marquez complimented histranslator, we will soon be rather dismayed at the translation strategiesadvocated by Gregory Rabassa. ‘Following the words of the original’ seemsnowhere near as informative as ‘cultural transfer, amplification, compensationmethod, adaptation, etc.’; yet it is precisely this academic jargon that Rabassawants to avoid � just as he steers clear of anything that smacks of thepostmodern. Instead, he offers us a good old memoir which, paradoxically,recollects 30 authors he has translated so far, starting with Julio Cortazar.Turning Rayuela into Hopscotch has turned Rabassa into a translator whosemain motto is: ‘a good translation is a good reading’ (p. 49). As ‘every readerreads his or her own book’ (p. 74), it should come as no surprise that Rabassadoes not care to comment on other people’s versions � ‘we all read differently,except that a translator’s reading remains in unchanging print’ (p. 89).

And how does Gregory Rabassa read? What do these recollections reveal?He seems to enjoy the complex narratives of magic realism or, if we are tobelieve him, these complicated stories seem to search him out. Jokingly, heexplains that his WWII cryptographic practice at the Office of StrategicServices might have predisposed him to commit himself to such books. Hetranslates as he reads, believing that this lends the English version thefreshness of a first reading. Choosing good authors himself or followingrecommendations of his (former) students guarantees a successful translation:‘the masters will enable you to render their prose into the best possibletranslation if you only let yourself be led by their expression, following theonly possible way to go. If you ponder you will have lost the path’ (p. 17).

This kind of apprenticeship will hopefully show the translator how to bea writer. The method of ‘learning by doing’ (p. 63) underpins this chronological presentation from the first translation of 1966 to the most recent of 2004and a couple awaiting their publishers. Anecdotal, with frequent glances at theproblems posed by translating titles, proper names or registers, the30 accounts together with the introductory reflections on translation as treasonand the final verdict: ‘not proven’ testify to Rabassa’s versatility, erudition and

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intuition, the desirable characteristics of ‘brilliant amateurs’ (p. 68). They alsoprove his humour, modesty and his unfailing respect for the authors he hasfollowed word by word.

doi: 10.2167/pstb005.0 Elzbieta Wojcik-LeeseJagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland

[Cultural Translation and the Interpretation of LiteraryCanons]Ning Wang. Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 2006. Pp. vii�343. ISBN7-101-05047-6: RMB 24.

With an impressive publication record in both English and Chinese, WangNing is one of the few native Chinese who have broken the Sino�Anglo/Western linguistic�cultural barrier and emerged in the international academiccommunity as figures of considerable recognition. Now this status is all themore consolidated with this publication in Chinese (following his English-language volume Globalization and Cultural Translation from 2004). Dealingagain with ‘cultural translation’, this Chinese volume is largely a collection ofpapers published before and translated or rewritten for the present purpose.A typical representative of the discourse on translation and culture inChina, this book is no doubt a forward step over the traditional anthro-pological�linguistic sense of culture and translation typically represented bythe overdue conventional addiction to Eugene Nida’s theory of translation(Bassnett, 1998: 129�132).

Wang Ning’s book consists of a tripartite body and an appendix. Part 1centres on the issue of cultural translation. Sequentially discussed here are sixmajor issues, namely the translatology turn put forward as a way out forcultural studies now commonly recognised as trapped in a bottleneck ofdevelopment (Ch. 1), the embedment of translation studies within culturalstudies for a full display of the dialogic and coordinative function of translationin the context of globalisation (Ch. 2), the disciplinary status of translationstudies as a science (Ch. 3), the proposal of different levels of correspondence orequivalence setting cultural translation as the ideal, though only partiallypossible in real practice (Ch. 4), the reconstruction of China’s critical discoursethrough theoretical translation (Ch. 5) and the role of diasporic writing(especially in English) in accelerating the globalisation of Chinese literatureand culture (Ch. 6).

Part 2 moves on to the recanonisation in translation as the interpretation ofculture. Translation is here posed as a means to question and reconstruct theliterary canons. Picking up the three ways out proposed for cultural studies inthe first chapter of Part 1 (p. 12), Chapter 1 explores the canon formation in thecultural interpretation (i.e. translation) of literature on the basis of a case studyof Northrop Frye’s The Great Code: The Bible and Literature. Using English as areference point, Chapter 2 explores the role of the globalisation-drivenworldwide spread of Chinese in the rewriting process of the history ofChinese literature and Chinese literatures. Chapter 3 elaborates on China’s(post)modernity as the result of translation and hybridisation that are mainly

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evidenced in Lin Shu’s translation practice. Chapter 4 is on the glocalisationstrategy of cultural translation and its dual role of translation in its culturalcolonisation and decolonisation. The last three chapters are case studies of,respectively, Walt Whitman’s crucial role in the formation of China’smodernity (Ch. 5), the foundational significance of M.H. Abrams’s The Mirrorand the Lamp for the global spread of Romanticism as the earliest attempt ofworld literature at the ‘cultural globalisation’ (Ch. 6) and the first-timeproposal to the international academic circles of the concept of open-ended,future-oriented and thus ever (un)translatable ‘Ibsenisation’ as a principle ofpostmodern aesthetics (Ch. 7).

Part 3 puts emphasis on the overall review of cultural studies and theinterpretation of cultural theories. Chapter 1 focuses on the latest developmentand the future prospect of cultural studies in the context of globalisation.Picking up again the three ways out proposed for cultural studies in the firstchapter of Part 1 (p. 12), this chapter puts forward the strategy of conformingwith the globalising trend and seeking from it chances to develop and spreadChinese culture worldwide (pp. 211�214). This decolonising or glocalising �that is, globalising in the reverse direction, or minoritising in Homi Bhabha’swords (p. 206) � strategy is carried into Chapter 2 (pp. 221�232, 235�236),which is on the cultural analysis of Chinese films in the context ofglobalisation. Besides the above film studies, other recent and most promisingtheoretical areas are outlined in the next two chapters, respectively gender andqueer studies (both issuing from the turn from social status to genderuniqueness in feminism) in Ch. 3, and the picture theory and the turn fromphono/ideographical to iconographical criticism in Ch. 4. In the last twochapters, the writer puts forward the strategy for the globalisation of China’shumanities and social sciences on the basis of the case studies of MikhailBakhtin and Jacques Derrida. Both theoreticians have had a great influence inWestern academic circles. While Bakhtin’s case is used to illustrate Said’snotion of travelling theory and the importance of translation to the globalisa-tion of China’s studies of Bakhtin, Derrida’s case study offers a summary ofDerrida’s deconstructive theory and its methodological relevance for thestudies of language, culture and translation.

The Appendix consists of two dialogues offering a discursive summary ofWang Ning’s key viewpoints and an illustration of the dialogicity underlyingall his theoretical undertakings. The first one is conducted between DouweFokkema and Wang Ning, revolving around four issues: the future prospect ofthe discipline of comparative literature, the studies of the influence of theChinese literature and culture on Europe (a topic on which Qian Zhongshu isclearly a forerunner), the conflict between comparative literature and culturalstudies, and the question of diaspora. There are (dis)agreements in each issue,and one cautional remark Fokkema makes twice in the discussion is the lack ofa sound methodology in Wang Ning’s undertakings of the second and thefourth.1 The second dialogue, more like an interview of Wang Ning by ShengAnfeng, is about Wang Ning’s stance on eight issues of concern in today’sacademic circles in China, ranging from the disciplinary status of translatologyand the function of translation for (de)colonisation to the influence of Chineseliterature in Western countries and the relationship between literary theory

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and translation studies. Both dialogues provide a shortcut to Wang Ning’sviewpoints on many issues.

Viewed as a whole, Wang Ning’s argumentation has several cornerstones,including the themes of globalisation and glocalisation, Edward Said’s notionof travelling theory and Homi Bhabha’s concept of cultural translation. It isindeed admirable to cohere all these into an organic whole. Its significancecould only emerge through a closer look.

Originally put forward by Homi Bhabha (p. 59), ‘cultural translation’ is a keyconcept used in the book and deserves a little explanation. In Wang Ning’smind, unlike low-level linguistic rendition that seeks equivalence at word,sentence and paragraph level, cultural translation refers to the higher level oftranslation that seeks overall (con)textual equivalence allowing for a rearrange-ment of paragraphs or structure without interfering with the content ormeaning of a text (p. 52). Translation in this sense is redefined as a revision(p. 61), i.e. a dynamic rendering of the spirit and style of the source text (pp. 35,50�52). Its aim is to put on the move ideas and theories and cast them back intotheir wandering state (Said, 1983, 2000; quoted in this book on pp. 129�131,198�199 and 278�279). Viewed in this way, this whole book is no doubt aninstance of cultural translation at work.

On the basis of the above conception, Wang Ning’s biggest contributionlies in his affinity with Bassnett and Lefevere in both his consistent self-acknowledgement as a scholar of comparative literature and his orientation ofcultural studies to a translatological turn, a theoretically more rigorous thrust(p. 13) on the basis of Bassnett’s translational turn in the same field in 1998 andBassnett and Lefevere’s cultural turn in translation studies in 1990.2

Corresponding to the many viewpoints in Polysystem theory, such as hisargument for cultural studies being ‘anti-institutional and critical’ (p. 10) (likethe marginality of translated literature in PS theory), Wang Ning’s secondcontribution lies in his approaching those issues from the present-day macrocontext of globalisation, another perspective that has an extremely highcurrency and relevance to every one of us. Threading through a major part ofthe book is the same argument moving from globalisation in the world to itsconsequential demand of the emphasis of Chinese�English translation incontemporary China’s academic circles (pp. 14�17, 26�29, 37�39, 58�75,86�90, 110�121, 138�140, 148�153, 214, 279�281). This call for a shift ofemphasis is Wang Ning’s greatest contribution, though still a little early formany Chinese scholars. It is its glocalising or decolonising function for thereconstruction of China’s critical discourse (pp. 58�75) or modern literature(pp. 66�71, 145�149) that defines Wang Ning’s pioneering role in thisadvocacy.3

It is easy to see that in the framework of Wang Ning’s argument,globalisation takes on the inverse sense of its usual version from the economiccontext where the international power play considerably favours the strongercountries, especially the English-speaking ones. Globalisation in that contextmeans monopolisation, a replay of the old-time colonisation of the weaker bythe stronger. But an economically powerful country is not necessarily aculturally strong one. That is why this favour, once relocated in the presentcontext of literary and/or cultural studies, tends to dissolve and turn

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bidirectional. Here, the economically involuntary colonisation (either willinglyor unwillingly received) tends to give place to double voluntarism: voluntarydecolonisation from the self’s side and voluntary colonisation from the other’sside, as is readily evidenced in Wang Ning’s theoretical emphasis ontranslation out of the mother tongue in today’s China, that is, Chinese�EnglishEnglish translation. We might as well say that this double voluntarism isequally applicable to translation into the mother tongue in China as well as inthe world, in which case what prevails is voluntary decolonisation from theother’s side and voluntary colonisation from the self’s side. That is wherehybridisation comes into play, a new theme that is now fast colonising its ownterrain in cultural and translation studies of today.

In face of the ever-increasing spread of global chaos and confusion, wecould see that it is this voluntarism that brings real hope to the possibility of apeaceful coexistence of different cultures, races, ethnic groups and nations.No translation, no humanity. This has always been the case throughout humanhistory. And now pinned down specifically for the present world, hybridisa-tion, as the core of translation, has to be voluntarily emphasised for everyinstance of translation in every situation. Of course, the equilibrium forhybridisation is difficult to find and maintain, but its direction or inclination(leaning toward one language or side in translation) has to be tailored to aspecific local situation, spatially and temporally demarcated.

Indeed the uniqueness of Wang Ning’s sense of globalisation lies exactly inits localisation in the Chinese context, where globalisation is for him boththe means and the end, used interchangeably with and defined innovativelyby decolonisation and glocalisation. It is this strong sense of locality in himthat makes up yet another contribution to cultural and translation studiesworldwide.

doi: 10.2167/pst006b.0 Xiangjun LiuFudan University and Shanghai University of Finance & Economics,

China

Notes1. This immaturity is a deep-rooted problem of cultural studies and is duly admitted

by many scholars in the field. Wang Ning, though readily admitting the flaw, tendsto view it positively by partially crediting to it the prosperity of the whole field(pp. 23, 238, 271). This positive spirit is an important prop for his dialecticargument on globalisation, a source of not only challenges or conflicts but alsoopportunities for dialogues (pp. 20�22, 38�39, 65, 77�78, 110�121, 141, 148�153,203�207, 211�214, 220�236, 270).

2. It must be pointed out that, despite the affinity between Wang Ning’s translato-logical turn and Bassnett’s translational turn in the same field of cultural studies,we can find obvious difference between the two. While Wang Ning tends to � atleast for the time being � include translation studies in cultural studies, viewingthe former as a category under media studies, which in turn constitute a key part ofthe latter in the context of globalisation (pp. 22�23), Susan Bassnett is moreinclined to call for a translational turn in cultural studies from the perspectiveof the ‘meeting’ (Bassnett, 2001: 132) of, or the ‘overlap’ (Bassnett, 2001: 136)/’cooperation’ (Bassnett, 2001: 138) between translation studies and cultural studies.In other words, what Bassnett looks at is the common ground between cultural and

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translation studies as two different and parallel fields. Yet this turn or commonground metamorphoses itself in Edwin Gentzler’s interpretation into a joint, avirtual merge of the two fields (Gentzler, 2001: xx). This ‘ambitious’ turn, whetheror not originally intended by Bassnett, is clearly very different from Wang Ning’sturn.

3. Wang Ning is not alone in this pursuit. Similar significant calls come from twoother pioneers, Lu Gusun from Fudan University and Pan Wenguo from EastChina Normal University, though each approaches the issue from a differentperspective. Viewed sociologically, Lu Gusun’s claim for the shift of emphasis ismade mainly from the rationalist perspective, aiming directly at the huge mass ofChinese learners of English, while Pan Wenguo’s is mainly for the legitimacy ofthis exodoric thrust in the spread to the world of classical Chinese works. Thesethree strains of thought deserve a parallel systematic study, which is howeverbeyond the scope of the present book review.

References

Bassnett, S. (2001) The translation turn in cultural studies. In S. Bassnett and A. Lefevere(eds) Constructing Cultures: Essays on Literary Translation (pp. 123�140) (Reprintedfrom the edition of 1998 by Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd.). Shanghai:Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.

Gentzler, E. (2001) Foreword. In S. Bassnett and A. Lefevere (eds) Constructing Cultures:Essays on Literary Translation (pp. ix�xxii) (Reprinted from the edition of 1998 byClevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd.). Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign LanguageEducation Press.

Wang, N. (2004) Globalization and Cultural Translation. Singapore: Marshall CavendishInternational.

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