Translating foreign otherness
Document Type
Journal article
Source Publication
Across Languages and Cultures: A Multidisciplinary Journal for Translation and Interpreting Studies
Publication Date
2006
Volume
7
Issue
1
First Page
23
Last Page
36
Keywords
foreignization; otherness; dialogism; difference; interpretability; sameness
Abstract
Central to translation is cultural anxiety and ambivalence about foreign otherness, which is essentially reified in cultural politics underlying translation. The ubiquity of ideology may be exaggerated or overstated, but it is manifest in a tendency to be seen as primarily bound up with language and art, and the needs of translation are inseparable from the political or cultural concerns in the target language system. The cultural politics of difference has a lot to do with truth-telling, sincerity, intelligibility and empathy. Effective translation depends not only upon a reasonable understanding of the content of the message that has been translated, but also on an ability, on the part of the target reader, to relate that message to the relevant cultural situation by developing a necessary knowledge of foreign otherness in its cultural political context. The artifice or artificiality of sameness entails turning away and reduction, yet cultural impositions are understandably considered as intrusive, and debates on literature and translation, often ideologically charged, tend to center around what foreign otherness is capable of doing or undoing. In defiance of the prevailing political conditions, translation may embrace and introduce foreign political and ethical values.
DOI
10.1556/Acr.7.2006.1.2
Print ISSN
15851923
E-ISSN
15882519
Publisher Statement
Copyright © 2006 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest.
Access to external full text or publisher's version may require subscription.Full-text Version
Publisher’s Version
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Sun, Y. (2006). Translating foreign otherness. Across Languages and Cultures: A Multidisciplinary Journal for Translation and Interpreting Studies, 7(1), 23-36. doi: 10.1556/Acr.7.2006.1.2