Chapter 08. Intro Video.

Cultural and ideological turns

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Well, the first half of the book looked at linguistics,

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or theories that were more linguistic.

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Chapter 7 looked at Descriptive Translation Studies and systems.

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Chapter 8 is focusing on

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what is known as the cultural turn.

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This was a reaction against the linguistic theories,

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which is understandable at the time, in the 1980s

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.

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I am a fan or proponent of linguistic theories or theories that are

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mixed methods.

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So

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the cultural turn.

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proposed at that time, the late 80s, early 90s
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did

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well in expanding the scope of translation. So I fully agree with those analyses

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that are based not only on linguistics, but on the context in which a text is produced.

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We don't translate in a vacuum.

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So,

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we have

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The cultural turn expanding

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away from the pure linguistic method, that I agree with.

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I also agree with

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the cultural turn’s

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bringing in

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other theories from other disciplines

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and really giving life to Translation Studies.

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So,

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in the 1990s there was a lot of work done
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or the 1980s, on the “manipulation of literature”, as Theo Hermans said in his edited volume.

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In the 1990s there were

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Susan Bassnett, André Lefevere, Sherry Simon

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and others on gender and translation, postcolonialism and translation. All these links were being
made to other disciplines

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and gave real energy to

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the work, but we should not,

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I hasten to add, discard linguistic analysis

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as irrelevant or as stuck in the past.

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It's a vital tool

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in being able to describe why

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a text means what it does.

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And then there's the term ideology,

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Which came became popular in the 1990s and 2000s.

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I've got a few volumes with ideology in the title.
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Some people, again I can understand why,

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react against ideology.

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When you read through

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the texts

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in this chapter,

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try and think why.

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What's the problem with ideology? What does it do well?

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What are the alternatives?