Translation & Interpreting Studies I.

Sociological Approaches II (Narrative)

References

Al-Herthani, Mahmoud (2009) Edward Said in Arabic: Narrativity and Paratextual Framing,
PhD Thesis: Manchester, CTIS: University of Manchester.
Al-Sharif, Souhad (2009) Translation in the Service of Advocacy: Narrating Palestine and
Palestinian Women in Translations by the Middle East Media Research Institute
(MEMRI), PhD Thesis, Manchester, CTIS: University of Manchester.
Baker, Mona (2006) Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account, London & New York:
Routledge.
Baker, Mona (2007/2010) ‘Reframing Conflict in Translation’, Social Semiotics 17(1): 151-
169; reprinted in Mona Baker (ed.) Critical Readings in Translation Studies, London
& New York: Routledge, 113-129.
Baker, Mona (2008) ‘Ethics of Renarration: Mona Baker is Interviewed by Andrew
Chesterman’, Cultus 1(1): 10-33.
http://www.monabaker.com/documents/CULTUSInterviewFinal.doc.
Baker, Mona (2009) ‘Resisting State Terror: Theorizing Communities of Activist Translators
and Interpreters’, in Esperanza Bielsa and Christopher W. Hughes (eds) Globalization,
Political Violence and Translation, Basingstoke, Hamps: Palgrave Macmillan, 222-
242.
Baker, Mona (forthcoming) ‘Narratives of Terrorism and Security: ‘Accurate’ Translations,
Suspicious Frames’. Under review by Critical Studies on Terrorism (pdf copy on
intranet).
Boéri, Julie (2008/2010) ‘A Narrative Account of the Babels vs. Naumann Controversy:
Competing Perspectives on Activism in Conference Interpreting’, The Translator
14(1): 21-50. Reprinted in Mona Baker (ed.) Translation Studies (4 Vols), Volume IV,
London & New York: Routledge, 268-98.
Boéri, Julie (2009) Conference Interpreting and Civil Society Networks, PhD Thesis,
Manchester: CTIS, University of Manchester.
Bruner, Jerome (1991) ‘The Narrative Construction of Reality’, Critical Inquiry 18(1): 1-21.
Goffman, Erving (1974/1986) Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience,
Boston: Northeastern University Press; Chapter 9: ‘Ordinary Troubles’, 301-344.
Hall, John R., Mary Jo Neitz and Marshall Battani (2003) Sociology on Culture, London &
New York: Routledge.
Harding, Sue-Ann (2009) News as Narrative: Reporting and Translating the 2004 Beslan
Hostage Crisis, PhD Thesis, Manchester: CTIS, University of Manchester.
Hinchman, Lewis P. and Sandra K. Hinchman (eds) (1997) Memory, Identity, Community:
The Idea of Narrative in the Human Sciences, Albany: State University of New York
Press.
Somers, Margaret (1994) ‘The Narrative Construction of Identity: A Relational and Network
Approach’, Theory and Society 23(3): 605-49.
Somers, Margaret (1997) ‘Deconstructing and Reconstructing Class Formation Theory:
Narrativity, Relational Analysis, and Social Theory’, in John R. Hall (ed) Reworking
Class, Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 73-105.
Somers, Margaret R. and Gloria D. Gibson (1994) ‘Reclaiming the Epistemological “Other”:
Narrative and the Social Constitution of Identity’, in Craig Calhoun (ed) Social Theory
and the Politics of Identity, Oxford UK & Cambridge USA: Blackwell, 37-99.
White, Hayden (1980/1987) ‘The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality’,
Critical Inquiry 7(1); reproduced in Hayden White (1987) The Content of the Form:
Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation, Baltimore & London: the John
Hopkins University Press, 1-25.

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Whitebrook, Muareen (2001) Identity, Narrative and Politics, London & New York:
Routledge.

Narrative identity vs. stable attributes associated with identity politics (e.g. woman, black,
Pakistani, Muslim). “The narrative identity approach embeds the actor within relationships
and stories that shift over time and space and thus precludes categorical stability in action”
(Somers and Gibson 1994:65).

“Narrative location endows social actors with identities … hence the term narrative identity”
(Somers and Gibson 1994:61).

“Narrative identity ... consists of stories we tell to ourselves about ourselves and the stories
we or others tell to others, or stories that are told to others about ourselves – all the stories in
which we are included” (Whitebrook 2001:10).

Question of power and socialization: people are not “free to fabricate narratives at will;
rather, they must “choose” from a repertoire of available representations and stories. Which
kinds of narratives will socially predominate is contested politically and will depend in large
part on the distribution of power” (Somers and Gibson 1994:73).

Narrative(s): not an optional mode of communication but the principal mode by which we
experience the world; constitute rather than merely represent reality; diffuse: not necessarily
articulated in a single text or stretch of language; discursively elaborated, in the main, but
may also be elaborated through other means, for example visually.

Four types of narrative: ontological (personal), public, conceptual (disciplinary) and meta-
narratives (Somers & Gibson 1994, Baker 2006).

1. Personal (Ontological in Somers and Gibson’s terminology): stories we tell ourselves

and others about our place in the world and about our own personal history.
2. Public: stories elaborated by and circulating among social and institutional formations
larger than the individual, such as the family, religious or educational institution, the media,
and the nation.
3. Conceptual (disciplinary): stories and explanations that scholars in any field elaborate for
themselves and others about their object of inquiry (e.g. theory of evolution, Bourdieu’s
theory of social structure).
4. meta-narratives: narratives “in which we are embedded as contemporary actors in history
… Progress, Decadence, Industrialization, Enlightment, etc.” (Somers & Gibson 1994:61).
Meta-narratives have a much wider geographical and temporal spread than public narratives
and affect the lives of many people across the globe. They are “the epic dramas of our time”
(Somers 1992:605) – e.g. the Cold War (communism vs. capitalism) and the so-called ‘War
on Terror’.

Four features of narratives (Somers & Gibson 1994):

Relationality of parts: Relationality means that it is impossible for the human mind to make
sense of isolated events or of a patchwork of events that are not constituted as a narrative.
Causal emplotment: Emplotment allows us to turn a set of propositions into an intelligible
sequence about which we can form an opinion and thus charges the events depicted with
moral and ethical significance.

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Selective appropriation: Narratives are constructed according to evaluative criteria which
enable and guide selective appropriation of a set of events or elements from the vast array of
open-ended and overlapping events that constitute experience.
Temporality: Temporality refers to the embeddedness of narrative in time and space and is
understood as constitutive of narrativity rather than as an additional or separable layer of a
story.
In other words: narratives are stories, and as such have to be causally ‘constituted’
and located in temporal and social space. They have to allow us to make moral
decisions.

Other features (Bruner 1991) include:

Narrative accrual: the outcome of repeated exposure to a set of related narratives, ultimately
leading to the shaping of a culture, tradition, or history.
Genericness & Particularity: Individual narratives have to be elaborated within established
frameworks of narration in order to be intelligible and effective. Each naarrative refers to
specific events and people but nevertheless does so within a more general framework of ‘story
types’ which give the specific happenings their meaning and import – e.g. a generic love story
(within certain cultures at certain moments in time) might include elements such as
‘courtship’, ‘exchange of gifts’, ‘exchange of vows’; or even ‘a knight’ (realised in various
guises) ‘on a white horse’ (actual or metaphorical) ‘rescuing a beautiful damsel in distress’.
The well-known films Shrek and Shrek II specifically challenge and ridicule this generic
mould. For a very good example of such a generic storyline in contemporary politics, see the
article by McAdams (Redemption and American Politics) in the Chronicle of Higher
Education (copy on intranet, Articles Section).
Normativeness/breach: A breach presupposes a norm. Normativeness is a feature of all
narratives, whether dominant or marginalized. Socialization into any narrative order has its
repressive side.

For the features of narrativity to become operative, and for a set of events to be constituted as
a narrative with a specific pattern of causal emplotment, a considerable amount of discursive
work has to be undertaken by those doing the narration. The notion of frame can be
productive in outlining some of the ways in which this discursive work is carried out,
especially in translation and interpreting. ‘Frame’ overlaps with ‘narrative’ to some extent,
but it is helpful to distinguish between the two in order to explain how the ‘same’ story can be
framed in quite different ways by different narrators.

Sites of framing in and around the translation proper

* Temporal and Spatial Context (Historical Moment)

* Titles
* Outer Paratexts (cover, blurb)
* Inner Paratexts: Introductions and Prefaces
* Inner Paratexts: Footnotes
* Textual Choices (within the translation)

Some Core Questions for the Application of a Narrative Framework

QUESTION 1: How are individuals and institutions/groups positioned or how do they position
themselves in relation to: personal, public, conceptual and meta-narratives? Especially
relevant for studies of activist communities (see Boéri 2008, 2009, Baker 2009).

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QUESTION 2: What is the nature of the interplay between the different types of narrative (e.g.
personal and public) and how is this interplay reflected in textual decisions (including
decisions made by mediators of texts, such as translators, interpreters, editors, rapporteurs)?

* Personal narratives are constrained by public narratives

* No personal narrative can be elaborated without reference to – without drawing on –
shared, public narratives
* Personal narratives are crucial for the elaboration and maintenance of public
narratives, and hence
* Personal narratives are potentially threatening to the social order – and may be used
deliberately to undermine it (e.g. feminist work on recovery, via translation)

Examples of Implications (for Translation) of Interdependence between Personal and

Public Narratives

* A personal narrative may be suppressed completely through non-translation, e.g.

Edelman persistently refused to view the establishment of the State of Israel

as the belated ‘meaning’ of the Holocaust … Consequently, his narrative of
the uprising was silenced and his role was played down. His book, The
Ghetto Fighting, published in Warsaw in 1945 by the Bund, was translated
into Hebrew only 56 years later, in 2001 ….

Yitzhak Laor, ‘Children of the State’, quoting Idith Zertal (Israel’s

Holocaust and the Politics of Nationahood, CUP, no page number) in
London Review of Books, 26 January 2006, p. 9.

* Translations of canonical texts by dominant institutions tend to elaborate roles and

values that direct the personal narratives of individual readers – e.g. retranslations of
canonical texts like the Bible and various literary works (including children’s
literature) to elaborate new roles and values for members of society. Enid Blyton’s
books, for instance, were revised and retranslated to tone down or eliminate what are
now considered as negative stereotypes (relating to gender, race and class).

* A personal narrative may be partially suppressed, dismissed or modified to serve a

dominant public narrative in the host society. Particularly interesting in the case of
translations of biographical works – how might a biography or autobiography of
someone like Lev Walensa (Poland) or Anwar Sadat (Egypt) written, say, in English
or French (Casanova’s dominating languages of the World Republic of Letters), travel
back to the original culture in translation, given disparate assessments of the relevant
individuals abroad and at home?

QUESTION 3: What strategies do speakers and writers (but particularly cultural mediators such
as translators and interpreters) draw on in order to renegotiate (or reframe) a narrative in a
new setting? For instance, the narrative of an asylum seeker that is unlikely to resonate with
British officials whose own narratives of what is normal and what is not may lead them to
conclude that certain elements of the refugee’s narrative are exaggerated or unconvincing.

QUESTION 4: How do people, cultural mediators included, assess the various narratives that
circulate in their communities to decide whether they are believable, coherent and worthy of
their commitment (see chapter 7 in Baker 2006)?