3

Discourse and Translation –

A Social Perspective
Ian Mason

The concept of ‘discourse’ (whether simply in the sense of the organisation

of verbal interaction or as uses of language giving voice to the meanings
and values of social institutions) has been current in translation studies for
many years without generating a great deal of debate about how discourses
actually affect translator behaviour. Starting from Foucault’s notion of
discours, and drawing on (critical) discourse theory (Blommaert 2005) and
Hatim’s (e.g. 2001) notion of socio-textual practices, this chapter places
discourses and translators within the framework of communities of practice
(Wenger 1998). Viewing translation as a socially situated activity implies
consideration of the multiple communities of which translators (and other
text users) are members – and the essential role of discourses in negotiating,
reinforcing or challenging power relations (Barton and Tusting 2005). This,
in turn, argues for an inclusive account of the act of translating, relating all
participants to the processes of positioning of self and others, negotiation
and ownership of meanings, in which they are involved. Issues of identity
and power are thus central to this conception of translating, not in the
sense of predetermined positions or roles but as negotiated social practice.
From this perspective, a particular case of translating is then examined in
an attempt to relate overarching theories to actual translation processes and
to draw together discourse theory, elements of a sociology of translation
and the decisions translators make at both micro-level (for example, word
choice) and macro-level (for example, textual strategy).

3.1 Introduction

There is no ideal way of investigating the set of phenomena we know

as translation. This truism is, perhaps, worth re-stating at the outset

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© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2014
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of an attempt to bring together different – even disparate – strands of

thought in translation studies. From an early focus on contrastive lin-
guistics and the equivalence of language elements, translation studies
has evolved towards cultural, intercultural, historical and sociological
considerations of the context surrounding translation events. ‘Layer
upon layer of context’ (Tymoczko 2002: 9) has been explored in a
centrifugal move towards the outermost social, political and cultural
determinants of the settings in which the activity takes place. Over
the course of this journey, the field has engaged with many ways of
viewing and accounting for phenomena: structuralism, poststructural-
ism, postmodernism, postcolonialism, constructivism  – to name just
the most prominent ones. In some ways, this evolution has resembled
a flight from the centre (the source text, translator and target text)
towards ever more global and pan-cultural concerns. Underlying such
trends, one might suggest, are some irreducible facts about the inves-
tigation of translation.

1. Words embodied in texts are never a direct representation of mean-

ings. They are at best an imperfect record of an (evanescent) com-
municative event.
2. Human activities (including reading, writing, listening, speaking,
translating) are always context-dependent and context-forming.
They cannot usefully be studied or judged independently of their
contexts yet these contexts are non-finite and therefore only ever
partially available for observation.

Hence, the perceived futility of one-to-one comparisons of items

in source and target texts or, indeed, of entire decontextualised texts.
Hence, the need to dig ever deeper, to seek to unearth more telling,
more explanatory accounts of translational activity. Over the past two
decades, culturally and socially based studies, incorporating insights
from Derrida, Foucault, Bourdieu and many others, have widened per-
spectives and brought new understanding to our study of translation.
And many historical accounts have told us a great deal that is relevant
to the position of the translator in today’s postcolonial and globalised
world. This much is nowadays, I  feel, common ground in translation
studies.
There are, however, some dangers inherent in these centrifugal
moves. One of them is perceptible in some contextual accounts which
end up doing history, doing politics, committing to causes but having