In his paper, “A Bourdieusian Theory of Translation”, Jean-Marc Gouanvic tries to describe the act of translation through field, “habitus”, capital, and “illusio” concepts of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, in a way described as “providing new sets of analytical concepts and explanatory procedures to theorize the social nature of translation practices” by Moira Inghilleri [Inghilleri: 279]. Gouanvic’s aim is to reflect the sociological environment (fields and agents such as publishers, series directors, literary directors and critics) of the act of translation and how this environment is effected by translation and affects the translation.
Unlike Functionalist Approaches to translation that put the commissioner and translation’s purpose in the target culture in the centre of the translation activity and give a role to translator to realize the commissions only -although given the name expert-, Sociological Approaches’ focus is not on the individuals in the field or one specific translation activity, but rather the whole society and despite this idea, Sociological Approaches are less restricted in defining the translator’s choices during the process. According to the Functionalist Approaches as the translator is the expert of translating, s/he has a purpose during the process and translates appropriately for this purpose, thus has a conscious activity throughout the process shaped by her/his commission. However, Sociological Approaches take Bourdiue’s term habitus -embodied dispositions acquired through individuals’ social and biological trajectories and continually shaped and negotiated vis-à-vis fields [Inghiller: 208]- and define the act of translator through her/his habitus. According to Gouanvic, translation as a practice has little to do with conforming to norms through the deliberate use of specific strategies; in other words, it is not a question of consciously choosing from a panoply of available solutions [Gouanvic: 157, my emphasis]. The only freedom of the translator is to choose between translating a text or not and following the original closely or not. The other decisions of the translator actually are not her/his decisions, but they are decisions made unconsciously with the effect of habitus. Besides, the translator places him- or herself at the service of the writer to this capacity[*] in the target language and culture [Gouanvic: 157]. Thus, translator actually has no individualistic role in the process since all s/he does is to make explicit what the author implicit for the target culture. Translator has to understand the author in author’s own habitus and interpret her/him in her/his own habitus, therefore the translator is only a messenger between two cultures because of his/her expertise in both cultures’ habitus and her/his only job is to express the habits and the conventions.
The same approach to translator as a dependent entity in the field of literature is also apparent in the social capital gain. An author gains capital if her/his writing becomes a classic; however, translators’ role in turning these writings into classics are not discussed. Authors achieve these ranks, i.e. being an author of classic, all of a sudden by themselves and translator only “benefit” from this capital which the original text already has had. I think what Gouanvic misses here is examples such as translation of Edgar Allen Poe by Baudelaire, since through his translation Edgar Allen Poe gained his capital in Europe and became a classic in gothic literature.
And finally, the difficulty of translating is defined in the interaction between the original and the translation and keeping the “resemblance in difference” as if any room is made for any extreme. The translator is described as the agent of the writer, transferring the writer’s discourse into the target culture [Gouanvic: 158], so in other words, it has to resemble the writer’s text. And at the same time, the translator translates according to the norms defined by her/his habitus, so in a way the translation has to be different since it is encoded in a totally different environment. Therefore a translation has to resemble the original, but also has to be different from it somehow. The obscurity in Gouanvic’s paper actually lies particularly in this point. How resembling or how different should the translation be in order to be called a translation? The loose boundaries between all the concepts in the text make it ambiguous and confusing. The difference between the writer and the translator, between the translation and adaption, and between the resemblance and difference. They are all represented as binaries, but no clear limits are drawn around them. Thus it creates the question if the borderline between the activities of the writer and the translator are so blurred, how can Gouanvic define the role of the translator, habitus of the translator, and the capital of the translator so easily?
REFERENCES
Gouanvic, Jean-Marc. “A Bourdieusian Theory of Translation, or the Coincidence of Practical Instances” in The Translator. Volume 11, Number 2 (2005). pp. 147-166.
Inghilleri, Moira. “Sociological Approaches” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies ed. by Mona Baker and Gabriel Saldanha. Abington (2009). pp. 279-282.
[*] “The capacity to ‘[make] public things which everyone felt in a confused sort of way’ and the capacity of ‘publishing the implicit, the tacit’” [Gouanvic: 158].
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