Planning the Translation

Toury’s two papers, which are quite complementary to each other, mentions the ways by which translation and culture are affecting each other in terms of planning, that is, how culture planning affects translations and how translation planning affects culture. His general method of analyse is to give the description of past translational activities within these framework and explanations/observations on the cultural processes of the time. However, the problem is that Toury does not mention his perspective of the situation.

He defines planning as “any act of (more or less deliberate) intervention in a current state of affairs within a social group, i.e., making decisions for others to follow.” [Toury 1996, 151] and adds that it “[...], very often is performed for the very sake of attaining power rather than as bona fide attempt to introduce ‘desirable’ changes.” [Toury 1996, 152] Thus, he gives this power to translation and translators as well in the process of “invention of a culture, or cultural sector” [Toury 1996, 152]. He manages this by including pseudo-translations and genuine translations to the limits within the concept of translation. Because “[...] success of culture planning is often a result of certain flexibility whereas rigidity may well lead to failure.” [Toury 1996, 153] So by bringing the flexibility into the field of translation, he can count pseudo-translations as a type of translation. With the help of pseudo-translations, AGENTS OF CHANGE include translation into the general system, to the centre of the system.
The main deficient in Toury’s paper is the reactions of translators to have this kind of a pseudo power and to be taken into the centre rather than paving the way to the centre, and his side to the situation. Because I think that the so-called power in this situation is not in the hands of the translator most of the time, it is up to the market like in the example of the author who seeks a change and cannot dare to use his/her name, it is up to the ones who control the society, culture, and thus become planners like in the example of author’s fear of censorship. While Toury mentions the power of words and translation, somehow he includes the idea that “the presumed non-domestic origin of translations makes them less menacing” [Toury 1995, 42] and contradicts with himself. Besides, translation is never seemed less menacing than the “original” as it can be easily deduced form the Turkish and Kurdish translators brought to justice because of the Article 301.

However, he also gives translators the power by positioning translation differently from its previously inferior position to an equal position to the “original” text by defining his concept of norms and how they can help a translator to define his/her way in the process, i.e. whether s/he follows the “norms of the source text, [...] the pursuit of adequate translation” or “target norms and practices” thus an acceptable translation [Toury 1995, 56-7] And he gives the translator freedom to defence the end-product of the translation process, without disregarding the source text, better than most of the previous theories. This perspective will be more liberalizing than the above mentioned power given to the translators and writers as well in terms of translation decisions.

REFERENCES

Toury, Gideon 1996. “Translation as a Means of Planning and the Planning of Translation” in Translations: (Re)shaping of Literature and Culture ed. Paker, Saliha. 2002, pp.148-163.
Toury, Gideon 1996. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. 1995, pp.7-86.