SOCIAL SEMIOTICS

VOLUME 17

NUMBER 2

(JUNE 2007)

Situating Discourse on Translation and Conict

Siobhan Brownlie

This essay situates discourse on translation and conflict within a broad perspective, covering research approaches in the discipline of Translation Studies since the descriptive approach was established in the 1970s. It is suggested that the discourse on translation and conflict belongs in the main to a branch of committed approaches in Translation Studies, which, while not promoting particular methods of translating, highlights the impossibility of neutrality, and thus the necessity of recognizing the interventionist role of translators. Notions at the heart of the work of two leading scholars of translation and conflict, Baker and Tymoczko, are discussed in some detail. Their work is also critiqued, and a counterpoint is presented: the article on translation and war by Jones, which introduces the concept of the Derridian decision. The essay ends with a proposal for combining the perceived strengths of descriptive and committed approaches in translation research through recourse to Derridian philosophy. Keywords Descriptivism; committed approaches; engagement; translation and conict; Derridean decision

The school of Descriptive Translation Studies was set up in the 1970s, and can be described as a reaction to centuries of prescriptive writing on translation. Indeed, since the earliest statements by Cicero and St Jerome, much of the discourse on translation revolved around prescribing certain modes of translation, in particular whether translation should be literal or free. In contrast, descriptivism is resolutely empirical and aims to be non-evaluative. There are various different kinds of study that can be undertaken within the descriptive approach. The most common perhaps is the study of a corpus of translations and their source texts. The relationship between source texts and translations is described, then explanations for the findings are proposed in the form of norms followed by translators, and the role of the texts in the target culture. The goal of the discipline (as initially set up) was to amass a large number of studies of different genres of translation in different eras and cultures, based on which it would be possible to propose a series of laws of translational behaviour. Inspired by a disciplinary paradigm from the natural sciences, and by structuralist
ISSN 1035-0330 print/1470-1219 online/07/020135-16 # 2007 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/10350330701311439

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conceptions of society and literature, the pioneers of this approach, of whom Gideon Toury (1995) is the most notable, were tremendously important in putting Translation Studies on a firm footing as an academic discipline. The descriptivist approach also laid the foundations for a further development, the cultural turn, whereby the role of translation as a cultural vector became paramount. Descriptive Translation Studies was, however, criticized for its scientificity and rigidity. While supporting many of the accomplishments of Descriptive Translation Studies, Theo Hermans (1999) pointed out such problematic features as the goal of establishing laws of translation, and concomitantly the neglect of individual agency and individual translating situations. Other areas of neglect are the role of values, and the political and ideological effects of translation. Furthermore, Descriptive Translation Studies adopts the positivistic stance that the researcher is able to take an objective position with regard to the object of study. Hermans calls for a more self-critical stance, whereby researchers fully recognize that they filter translational data through their individual and societys conceptions. According to Hermans the role of the discipline is to theorize the historical contingency of different modes and uses of translation and of discourses on translation, including its own. We could call this development Critical Descriptive Translation Studies. In association with the cultural turn mentioned above, from the 1990s onwards there has been a revival of prescriptive approaches regarding translation. More specifically, these approaches could be described as committed approaches as they stem from a concern with the importance of political commitment. Committed approaches can be divided into approaches that espouse a specific political commitment, and those that are based on a more general commitment to the importance and even inevitability of political engagement. In the first branch of committed approaches, a researcher who is directly motivated in undertaking his or her research by a specific political engagement will prescribe a certain way of translating. Let us take some examples. Niranjana (1992) adopts a post-colonialist politics whereby she refuses the paradigm of a return to some pre-colonial utopia, but wishes rather to emphasize the diversity of the indigenous population. She promotes modes of translation which would reveal that complex richness, an example of which might be a literalness that foregrounds heterogeneity in the translation. Lotbiniere-Harwood (1991) is a ` vocal feminist. Her commitment is such that only feminist-friendly texts should be translated in the first place, and they should be translated using creative feminist translation strategies. Lotbiniere-Harwood terms this rewriting in the ` feminine. The rewriting aims to find target language means to convey the source text feminist play with language, in particular gender-marking. Venutis (1995) politics consists of critiquing the current domination of neo-capitalist values in the English-speaking world. He considers that fluent translation into English insidiously inscribes those values in translated texts, and he therefore

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promotes foreignizing translation strategies. Foreignizing translation can take the form of choosing to translate a foreign text excluded by target culture literary canons, maintaining source text aspects in the translation, or using a marginal target language discourse or heterogeneous mix of discourses. These strategies serve to signal the foreignness of the translated text, and serve as a challenge to the target culture status quo . The second branch of committed approaches is of primary importance for our purposes, since it is to this branch that important contributions to the discourse on translation and conflict belong. Since this is a new area of research, I have at this stage few texts at my disposal. However, I shall discuss in some detail the work of Mona Baker and Maria Tymoczko. These two researchers share a strong personal belief in the importance of political engagement, which they both have put into practice. Bakers personal website displays her support of the Palestinian cause, and more generally of the Arab-speaking world, in cases she judges to be unjust. Tymoczko has been engaged in various political movements in the United States, and has held elected political office for many years. As far as their research in Translation Studies is concerned, Baker and Tymoczko do not overtly promote a particular political agenda, but emphasize more generally the importance of political engagement. This stance leads them to prescribe (or at least strongly support) a certain view of translation, and, flowing from this, to prescribe (or at least promote) the kind of studies translation researchers should be undertaking. Tymoczko (2003) argues firmly against the metaphor of translators as being in-between. She presents a fascinating and detailed account of why this is such a pervasive metaphor in Translation Studies, particularly in recent times, and gives a number of reasons why we should not hold to this metaphor. Among other things, Tymoczko argues that the in-between metaphor grows out of narrow Western views on translation, and therefore it is not a good model for those seeking ethical geopolitical change (Tymoczko 2003, 199). The metaphor links in with misleading notions, such as the Romantic notion of the translator as poet genius alienated from allegiances to any culture, and the view that cultures are homogeneous and fixed. The metaphor does not in fact fit with historical research in Translation Studies, which shows that translations are grounded in particular places and times, and that translators are engaged and affiliated with cultural movements. Translators have ideologies and loyalties, and these are associated with actual cultural spaces, and not a nebulous in-between. Finally, the discourse of the in-between obscures the necessity of practical collective engagement as a requisite for social change. Baker concurs entirely with Tymoczko. For Baker (2005) the in-between metaphor supports the idea of a neutral space, a kind of no-mans land between discrete cultures, which would enable translators to transcend cultural and

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political affiliation.1 It also feeds into another metaphor commonly deployed in discussions of translation; that of the translator as bridge-builder. According to this metaphor, translators act as honest intermediaries who enable dialogue to take place between peoples and who improve the ability of peoples to understand each other. This over-romanticized view of translators as nonaffiliated bridge-builders between cultures ignores the reality that translation and translators do not always do good and are certainly not neutral, notably in situations of conflict. Baker (2005, 10) gives the striking example of The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). This organization selectively provides translations from the Arabic, Farsi and Hebrew media that reflect badly on the character of Arabs or in some way further the political agenda of Israel. The effect of the bridge-building metaphor may be to make translators complacent about the nature of their actual interventions. Baker has adopted and developed in her recent work a powerful theoretical framework in the form of social narrative theory. According to social narrative theory, every individual has a (or no doubt many) narrative location(s), and therefore neutrality is impossible. Translators are thus never politically neutral, even if they think they are:
Translators and interpreters are not merely passive receivers of assignments from others; many initiate their own translation projects and actively select texts and volunteer for interpreting tasks that contribute to the elaboration of particular narratives. Neither are they detached, unaccountable professionals whose involvement begins and ends with the delivery of a linguistic product. Like any other group in society, translators and interpreters are responsible for the texts and utterances they produce. Consciously or otherwise, they translate texts and utterances that participate in creating, negotiating and contesting social reality. (Baker 2006a, 105)

Consequently, translators and interpreters should take responsibility for the narratives they help circulate, and for the real-life consequences of giving those narratives currency. Tymoczko (2000) seems to be most interested in conscious or obvious political engagement. In speaking of engagement, Tymoczko is primarily concerned with translation as a sort of speech act: translation that rouses, inspires, witnesses, mobilizes, incites to rebellion, and so forth (Tymoczko 2000, 26). Translation, therefore, which has an activist aspect, which participates in social movements, and which is effective in the world at achieving social and political change. Such engagement is associated with conflict and struggle. The reason that translation is political is that it is always partial (in the two senses of this
1. The association of the in-between with political neutrality is not universally made by translation scholars. Drawing on Homi Bhabhas theory and with reference to a post-colonial context, Wolf (2000) argues that the third space is an in-between space that is productive of meaning, and that is the site of hybridization. In the (post-)colonial context, hybridity involves the assimilation and displacement of the colonizing culture by the colonized. Thus it is hybridity that allows the subversion of the dominant culture and language, and functions as a vector of resistance. The Third Space can then be considered to provide the potential for interventionist translation strategies.

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word): a translation is always less and more than its source text, a representation that creates a particular shaping of the source text. Tymoczko is particularly interested in how a source text from past centuries can be reactivated in translation, and remobilized for specific purposes, creating an image of the past that furthers ideological resistance and political programmes of the present. Tymoczkos (1999) book Translation in a Postcolonial Context presents a thorough study of translation as engagement in her examination of the translation of early Irish literature into English in the (post-)colonial context. The great value of this extended case study is that, rather than desiderata or suggested strategies (as in the case of Niranjana 1992), it produces concrete evidence of actual strategies and the actual role of translations and translators participating in anti-colonial struggles. Of particular interest is the series of retranslations of the tale Ta Bo Cu in ailnge from Irish into English, and their varying depictions of the main character Cu Chulainn.2 The first translations of early Irish literature formed a significant part of the Irish literary revival, which contributed to Irish cultural nationalism in the period 1890/1916. This nationalism facilitated Irish political organization, and ultimately Irish rebellion against the English. In the Irish text Ta Bo Cu in ailnge the character Cu Chulainn is louse ridden, violent, lustful, unreliable, imprudent, and odd. The late-nineteenth/ early-twentieth-century translators eliminated such elements to portray a decorous, dutiful, selfless and noble hero who sacrificed all to protect his tribe. Certainly the character was manipulated in accordance with reigning English values and literary models of the day with regard to the figure of the hero. But the principal issue is that Cu Chulainn came to epitomize the ideal of militant Irish heroism. At the turn of the century Cu Chulainn became the hero of many other forms of literary retellings, as well as artistic depictions. This created hero was a model for Irish nationalists who participated in the Easter Rising in 1916, which would lead to independence and the emergence of the Irish state. Years later after the troubles in Northern Ireland erupted in 1968, the image of the hero Cu Chulainn was again resorted to by both sides in the violent conflict. However, Thomas Kinsellas translation of The Ta in 1969 demythologized Cu in Chulainn, and even emphasized the anti-heroic, comic, earthy, and sexual aspects of the original text. Kinsellas aim was in part to contest the culturally repressive and politically regressive movement that Irish nationalism had become (Tymoczko 1999). Whether we judge the role of translation as being positive or not in each specific case, it played a part in political action, conflicts, and geopolitical shifts. It is interesting to note that, in speaking of engagement, Tymoczko (2000) talks about translation as being engaged, rather than translators. This is no doubt because translators are not always those who use translations for purposes of activism, nor are translators always fully aware of how their translations could be used. The nineteenth-century translators of early Irish
2. These translations were mainly undertaken for the benefit of the local Irish population who no longer spoke Gaelic, and certainly were not familiar with Old and Middle Irish.

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literature, for example, could not have foreseen how the hero image they created would be used for violent purposes in the Northern Ireland conflict in the 1970s (Tymoczko 2000, 43). Like Tymoczko, Baker is interested in the deliberate use of translations for political purposes in situations of conflict, as well as deliberate social and political engagement on the part of translators. Baker (2006b) describes how translation plays a key role in allowing international activist groups to evolve outside mainstream institutions with the aim of challenging dominant ideologies and promoting alternative views. The Internet is also very important for the ready circulation of texts and ideas. The combination of translation with the Internet has contributed to the creation of communities bound by a similar vision of the world that are unhindered by linguistic and national boundaries. There are two main ways in which translators are involved: various humanitarian and activist organizations draw heavily on the services of committed translators and interpreters, for example Peace Brigades International and Front Line Defenders, and a more novel development is the creation of strongly politicized activist communities within the world of professional interpreters and translators, such as Translators for Peace, Babels, and Translators and Interpreters Peace Network. In her book Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account , Baker (2006a) discusses a wide range of cases (from different languages and eras) involving translation and engagement, which both illustrate and are illuminated by social narrative theory. Of particular interest with respect to translation techniques is the discussion of framing. Framing can be defined as the ways in which translators and interpreters in collaboration with publishers, editors, and other agents, accentuate, undermine or modify aspects of narratives encoded in the source text or utterance. Temporal and spatial framing refers to embedding a text in a temporal/spatial context that encourages links with our present lives. A striking example is the 1,029 readings in translation of the ancient Greek antiwar comedy Lysistrata in 59 countries (including every American state) that took place on 3 March 2003 at the time of the invasion of Iraq. Selective appropriation of textual material refers to addition or omission designed to enforce certain aspects of a narrative. This can be quite blatant, such as the addition of the following words supposedly uttered by Bin Laden in translation in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn : We may retort with chemical and nuclear weapons. We have weapons as a deterrent. Framing by labelling refers to the choice of terms that provide an interpretive frame. The choice to translate a text using the terms Judea and Samaria (Israeli biblical names) rather than the West Bank has clear ideological implications. A final type of framing is the repositioning of participants through paratextual commentary, or textual strategies. An example is the translation of Othello into Egyptian vernacular, and the use of the vernacular in the translators discourse. This was a protest against panArabization, and against the separation of the people and intellectuals. So far we have been discussing translation and translators with respect to engagement. Baker recognizes that translation researchers too are not neutral,

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since they are embedded within specific narratives (cf. Hermans (1999) emphasis on the researchers filtering of data, mentioned above). Pieces of research are themselves narratives, which are in turn part of different types of narrative (political, social, and/or academic) (Baker 2006a, 129). Disciplinary narratives can powerfully shape research in an academic discipline.3 Baker (2005) considers that Translation Studies should give away the commonly advanced narratives of bridge-building and neutrality, in order to study the role of translators as interveners. Likewise, Tymoczko (2000) calls for the development of a theory of translation and engagement. She stipulates three requirements for this, the first of these being a theoretical approach to power. She finds that postcolonial theory provides a viable contemporary framework as a starting point, but that there would also have to be theorization of power as it pertains to translation. Her second requirement is an adequate range of case studies to serve as data for investigation, comparison and contrast. Here she finds that already a fair amount of work has been done. The third requirement is the establishment and development of theoretical concepts and practical methods that can describe what makes specific examples of engaged translation effective, and which can analyse translation techniques that are used in political engagement. Tymoczko criticizes Venutis (1995) concepts as potential tools for this third requirement, and suggests that rather tools could come from post-colonial studies and possibly from deconstruction. I would add that the social narrative theory adopted by Baker (2006a) provides an excellent framework for the study of translation and engagement. Tymoczkos own start on theorization of the subject draws on the following five features of the Irish translation movement, which can be seen as constituting requirements for using translation as a means of effective political engagement. The translation movement needs to have a clear set of shared goals and values. A group of translators need to act in concert, and as part of a larger cultural and political movement. There should be a defined and broad audience. Text must be chosen with specific political goals in mind, and there should be a willingness to manipulate the texts in translation in order to serve those goals. Finally, translators should be ingenious and varied in their approach, as there is no single translation strategy that equates with resistance. Although drawn from one context, these features may well be common to other contexts of political resistance through translation. As far as Tymoczkos and Bakers engagement as researchers is concerned, it is clear that they are committed to highlighting and studying translation as intervention and engagement. Their studies involve highly charged political and conflictual situations, in Ireland (Tymoczko) and in the Middle East among other contexts (Baker). Conflictual settings present obvious situations of engagement, extreme cases that force engagement, it could be said. Two
3. Narratives constructed by academic disciplines can also be influential in reaching beyond academia to shape public narratives, for example narratives informing politicians speeches and policies (Baker 2006a, 39).

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questions arise. Firstly, if other cases had been chosen, would they have supported Bakers and Tymoczkos emphasis on engagement and the impossibility of neutrality? It must at least be admitted that some translational situations will more obviously entail political involvement than others for translators and other participants. Tymoczko (1999, 291) indeed acknowledges this.4 Secondly, and more importantly, do Bakers and Tymoczkos personal engagements with respect to the Middle East and Ireland respectively unduly colour or influence their work to some extent? Through my following consideration of this question with reference to Bakers and Tymoczkos books, I most certainly do not wish to diminish the significance of these works. They are both extremely important and valuable works in the field of Translation Studies, contributing on the one hand a whole new theoretical approach to translation (social narrative theory), and on the other an excellent history of translation as a force for resistance in (post-)colonial circumstances (Ireland). My aim is simply to pursue a questioning of committed approaches as begun by Hermans. Hermans (1999) considers the relative virtues of descriptive approaches and committed approaches, discussing our first category of committed approaches, in which the researchers political commitment leads him or her to advocate a particular mode of translation. Hermans finds that the link to a practising translators point of view (prescribing what translators should do) in committed approaches is detrimental to a critical stance. As mentioned above, for Hermans the task of translation theory is to account for the conceptualization of translation practice at different historical times. He indicates that committed approaches are not the best equipped to accomplish this as their engagement limits critical distance, and their blind spots may overconstrain their interpretations. It could be said that all studies, both descriptive and committed, are constrained by interpretative conceptions. Hermans asserts, however, that the difference between critical descriptivism and committed approaches is situated at a deeper level than that of interpretative constraints, the level of presuppositions. For Hermans committed approaches do not question their presuppositions, so that the particular political stance of each approach is a given. A critical descriptive approach, on the other hand, should have a greater capacity for self-reflection, for questioning presuppositions, for eclecticism and combination of approaches, and for openness to various viewpoints that may be adopted in undertaking a study (see Brownlie 2003). We shall turn now to our second category of committed approaches, in which researchers advocate the importance of the study of translation and engagement, but not overtly any particular political view or mode of translation. Although in theory Bakers and Tymoczkos approach seems more open and less constraining than say that of Niranjana, of Lotbiniere-Harwood, and that of `
4. For his part, Jones (2004, 722, 723) acknowledges that in situations of conflict the translator is more acutely aware of his or her position as a constrained but autonomous social actor than in unmarked settings in which social, ethical and ideological considerations may remain below the level of conscious awareness.

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Venuti (first category committed approaches discussed above), in practice it could be just as constraining in terms of the actual research produced. This is because a researcher who believes in the importance of political engagement will necessarily hold certain political views and interests, and even if those views are not overtly propagated in research, they may well enter into the research and remain unquestioned. Let us examine some examples of research in which Baker and Tymoczko did not adopt a critical attitude to certain strongly held beliefs and preferences, which resulted in some points of incoherence. In Translation in a Postcolonial Context , Tymoczko strongly depicts the negative effects of the English colonization of Ireland:
Ireland experienced dispossession and genocide, economic oppression and political manipulation . . . The Irish have been subject to racism, ridicule, degradation. Few nations have experienced more cultural suppression and estrangement than Ireland under English colonialism, from the Statutes of Kilkenny of 1366 that banned the use of Irish language and customs by English colonists, to the penal laws of the seventeenth century which were intended to keep the Catholic majority in a state of permanent subjection, not to mention the stereotyping of Irish people, literature and culture in the nineteenth century. (Tymoczko 1999, 18)

Tymoczkos strongly negative view is no doubt related to her position as a scholar and lover of early Irish language and literature, who is dismayed at how the English destroyed that early indigenous culture. It is difficult to challenge a perspective that one holds to strongly. However, there can be a benefit for research in doing so. Tymoczkos point of view, expressed right at the beginning of her book, creates a strong atmosphere of binarism: the English versus the Irish, the colonizer versus the colonized, the oppressor versus the oppressed. Later on in the book, however, she criticizes binary thinking in translation theory. Particular translation strategies are not well characterized by binaries such as source or target orientation, for they in fact often constitute a mixed orientation, the choice of which is conditioned by the particular context. At a more general level, in the apparently straightforward binary case of the dual Irish tradition of literary translation and scholarly translation, the polarization masks in fact a symbiotic relationship in which each kind of translation is dependent for its existence on the other. Reader-friendly literary translations for the general public permitted scholars of early Irish literature to confine themselves to gloss translations; reciprocally, the existence of literalist scholarly translations in bilingual editions enabled the literary movement to produce free translations and adaptations (Tymoczko 1999, 139, 296). Tymoczko also discusses and supports the notion of hybridity. The Irish context itself was and is multicultural and multilingual. Tymoczko says that the nineteenth-century translations of early Irish literature display hybridity in that they conform with English mores and poetics, at the same time as asserting an independent Irish culture. The submission to certain aspects of cultural imperialism in the translations is said to be tactical, since it

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was necessary in the context of the time and it allowed the translators to pursue larger strategic goals that aimed at cultural and political resistance. Hybridity is indeed a powerful means of undermining colonialist authority:
The power of hybridity can be claimed for translation. Translations are inescapably hybrid, hybridized at the most fundamental levels of language, culture, and content. In Ireland translation*/itself a practice of hybridity*/served the interest of a hybrid people, who became thus doubly empowered. (Tymoczko 1999, 289)

It seems to me that Irish hybridity actually goes farther than Tymoczko depicts it at certain points. She sets up an opposition between English mores/poetics and Irish culture. And yet the Irish had in fact assimilated English values, such that this was not a case of submission to cultural imperialism, but rather a case of the hybrid subject strategically using the assimilated and accepted tools to further different interests from those associated with the originator of the tools. In Tymoczkos text there is created an uneasy and unresolved tension, or even contradiction, between a strong binary depiction of the situation from the outset, followed by (partial) disavowals of binarism. If Tymoczko had been more critical of her personal belief with regard to English colonization, she may have alighted upon the idea of making hybridity her starting point, and produced a more fully coherent work. Turning now to Baker (2006a), the following also involves an issue of theoretical coherence. Baker argues that there is little sense in following narratologists who make a distinction between story (chronological narrative events, a deep structural level) and text (what we read, incorporating the perspective the story is told from) (Baker 2006a, 17). Baker says this is because knowledge is never without a point of view, and furthermore, if it is recognized that narrative constructs reality, there can be no fully independent story. The implied equating of story and reality is no doubt spurious. Nevertheless, what is important is the refusal of a binary narratological theory.5 Later in the book Baker (2006a, 44) introduces the final category of narrative in social theory: meta-narratives. She gives some examples of meta-narratives recognized by others: Progress, Decadence, Industrialization, Enlightenment, Capitalism versus Communism, and Barbarism/Nature versus Civility. Baker indicates the following conditions for defining a narrative as a meta-narrative: durability over time, widespread impact cutting across geographical and national boundaries, strong influence on countless numbers of people, promotion of values, transcendental status through timelessness and universality, and persuasiveness and inevitability or inescapability. Baker suggests that dominance of the community first propagating the narrative may also be an important factor in its establishment. Meta-narratives are said to be spread among other ways by the vector of interlingual translation. Baker proposes as a contemporary meta-narrative the
5. For an impressive refutation of the dualistic approach with regard to narrative, see Smith (1980).

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war on terror, which has been propagated by the American political elite, and which Baker believes is aggressively sustained and promoted through a myriad of channels across the entire world . . . and . . . [which] directly impacts the lives of every one of us, in every sector of society (Baker 2006a, 45). She goes on to say that meta-narratives are undergirded by master plots, which are defined as generic story outlines or story in narratological terms (Baker 2006a, 78). According to Baker, all our narratives ultimately derive from sets of skeletal storylines with recurrent motifs (Baker 2006a, 79). An example given of a master plot underlying the meta-narrative of the war on terror is that of good versus evil. The problem here is that the master plot seems to be more general, more meta than the meta-narrative. This should immediately alert us to a problem in the theorization proposed. What I really want to point out is the contradictory statements regarding narrative dualism made by Baker (2006a, 17, 78), with the notion of metanarrative acting as the middle term. The reason why the notion of meta-narrative is very important for Baker is her firm belief in the status of the narrative of the war on terror. The meta-narrative is a type of narrative that is defined as being the most powerful of all in that it traverses both geographical boundaries and historical time to become an overriding factor in human motivation. Baker would support the notion of master plot, because through its master plots the supposed meta-narrative of war on terror acquires even greater strength, a timeless universal quality as well as a quality of ominousness and insidiousness, reinforced by the double meaning of the word plot. If Baker had adopted a more critical attitude to her own strong belief*/which, I have noted, is a difficult undertaking*/she would have investigated more deeply whether the war on terror fulfils the conditions for definition as a meta-narrative. At least one important condition that it does not (yet) fulfil is durability. The next step would have been to question the category and status of meta-narrative itself, taking into account theorists such as Lyotard who affirms contemporary disbelief in meta-narratives, and Jameson who considers that meta-narratives have become unconscious (Lyotard 1984, XII, XXIV). An examination of the category would have also included reflection on and questioning of the relationship of meta-narrative and master plot, and perhaps resulted in realization of the contradiction with respect to narrative dualism outlined above. Bakers book provides a wealth of examples, which are drawn from various different cultures and languages. My own competence allows me to comment on one example of which I have some knowledge. This concerns the question of the banning by the French Government of the Muslim hijab (headscarf) and other ostentatious religious symbols in French state schools in 2004. Baker recounts how often there are various and sometimes conflicting narratives about an event. Translation plays a particularly important role in events that become internationally known and commented on. Baker reports that in the case of the banning of the hijab, the French Governments decision gave rise to multiple narratives, some against and some for the ban. Baker (2006a, 22) then cites one

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of the narratives from an article that was translated from Urdu into English: the author of the article, Naseem, suggests that the French Government targeted its own Muslim population through the banning, in order to appease the United States, which the French had opposed on the issue of the Iraq invasion. This is an outrageous interpretation on more than one count. In narrative terms, it is totally lacking in coherence (Fisher 1987), mainly because it ignores the actual point of view expressed by the major player, the French Government. Nevertheless, Baker presents Naseems narrative without any evaluative comment. This is probably because her major interest is in the Arab world and its relation to the United States. Baker elaborates on the situation of Naseem, a PakistaniAmerican who in other parts of his article grafted on narratives about his experiences lecturing at an American college, and about the attitudes of Pakistani and Muslim women in the United States. If Baker had challenged her prevailing interest for a moment, and examined the French point of view, she might have been able to use the issue in a more interesting way at the end of her book, when she studies the question of assessing alternative narratives. The issue of the hijab could provide an excellent test case for Bakers proposed paradigm of assessment (from Fisher 1987), since opposing French and Anglophone narratives both appeal to the same transcendent values of tolerance and harmony among diverse religious communities.6 In the examples discussed above, we have seen that unquestioned political commitments, beliefs or interests on the part of the researcher may not be advantageous to research. The openness and self-questioning on the part of the researcher advocated by Hermans does seem a preferable schema. However, choices have to be made, and as humans and researchers we do need to have ethical concerns, to take up positions deliberately, and also to have guidelines for doing so. This could be considered a criticism of Hermans, who does not offer such guidelines. What is required, then, is a means of combining the openness of Hermans approach, with the necessity of engagement in the sense of making and holding to firm ethically informed decisions in the process of undertaking research. Of some help might be Fishers (1987) paradigm for assessing narratives (which is discussed by Baker). An assessment is made, based on the criteria of logic and moral values, in order to decide whether one should adopt a particular narrative or not. Fishers is a coherent means of assessment; however, openness requires not only entertaining competing narratives and deciding between them, but the possibility of questioning the narratives one has adopted in every new circumstance. Fisher does put emphasis on the variability of decisions depending on particular cases and contexts. His theory has, however, been criticized for not allowing a place for narratives that challenge the values of the audience, and for not promoting a critical stance towards all narratives (Baker 2006a, 162). The
6. In the context of this essay, it is interesting to note that the French principle of la (secularism) cite in state schools, has as one of its justifications the notion that state schools should be a secular space where religions are taught as a historical phenomenon without any proselytism, and where students are thus encouraged to take a reflective critical stance towards religious belief, and come to their own decisions independently of community or parental pressures (Commission Stasi 2003).

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question of a critical attitude in research towards our beliefs at the same time as engagement in every new situation is the crux of the matter. In order to further reflection on this issue, I shall discuss an article written by Francis Jones (2004). Like Tymoczko and Baker, Jones studies translation in relation to a situation of violent conflict*/the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s*/and he considers translation to be an engaged activity in that translators are not only textual communicators, but they are embedded and act in social and ideological situations. Jones discusses his own work as a literary translator. He outlines how translating during the wars of the Yugoslavian succession was for him a matter of strong cultural/political engagement. He took sides for moral reasons with Bosnia, and thus translated mainly works by Bosnian writers into English in order to defend and promote Bosnian and Herzogovinian culture. He particularly wanted to promote a notion of the complexity and richness of South Slav culture, so he translated works that accorded with that image. He wanted to portray an image of the region to the outside world as one that had a high literary culture, rather than the image of its being inherently a war-torn place. Apart from poetry translation, his main love and specialization, he also undertook other kinds of translation work if he thought that the texts contributed to his agenda and that the world needed to be informed of their contents. Despite the similarities noted above, in his article Jones discourse has quite a different tone from that of Tymoczko and Baker. Unlike the latter theorists, there is a distinct lack of confidence in Jones text. This is probably because he is speaking from a position on the ground. He is deprived of the habitual detachment of the researcher; he is describing his own work as a practising translator, and his own painful decisions. On the ground things are not clearcut, and a clear pre-decided political engagement does not suffice, since actual situations reveal themselves as singular and highly complex. In many cases there is no truly satisfactory decision; it is a matter of trying to do the least wrong. Jones (2004) describes a series of dilemmas he faced involving ethical concerns. Jones did not want to fall into the nationalists trap, so he kept on working with some Serbian and Croatian poets. He wanted to defend a broad, rich, post-Yugoslav culture, but he was worried whether this stance was ethical in view of the victimization of Bosnia. He was worried that translations of Serbian texts could give credibility to unacceptable nationalist propaganda. The translations could, for example, be seen to support the use of imagery and myths by the nationalists to justify hatred and genocide. The imagery could also reinforce negative stereotypes of the region for overseas readers. Jones was faced with the decision of whether to translate excellent poets, who had reprehensible politics. In the end he favoured the aesthetic argument, and decided not to break personal ties that had been established prior to the wars. Other issues concerned quality. Even when the quality of a poem was not great, Jones sometimes decided to translate it if he felt the message was important, and he improved the quality of the writing in translation. He did not undertake the opposite procedure, which would have been to diminish the quality of a poem written by an evil poet! A final point is that Jones is very aware of his

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gate-keeping role in accepting or not to translate certain poems or poets. When faced with difficult decisions and dilemmas presenting rival options with no necessarily better path, Jones says that Derridas notion of a just decision (de cision juste 7) helped him come to a resolve for action. It helped him to take into account the complex range of factors involved in the decision. Jones believes indeed that having to confront quasi insoluble textual, interpersonal, and ethical dilemmas defines the status of the literary translator as a creative agent. From the point of view of research, Jones article might suggest that according importance to engagement can be linked to a questioning of the researchers engagements. Let us examine Derridas (1990) notions more closely. Derrida argues that it is necessary to make decisions, since inertia eludes responsibility. For a decision to be properly a decision, a person must take full responsibility for it, exercising his or her full freedom. If a decision is made by simply following a rule, it is not a real decision. A real decision is one in which the person is not a slave to a rule, and in which sensitivity to the complexity and otherness of situations is of paramount importance. But a just decision cannot disregard rules, laws, conventions, and authority. A just decision involves a critical attitude towards or a calling into question of established norms by passing through an experimental and intuitional stage, before finally (re)instituting a norm or rule. In other words, a just decision involves traversing the ordeal of the undecidable in which two absolutely different orders are blocked together: calculation (rules, etc.), and that which is absolutely heterogeneous to calculation. A decision results, therefore, from the struggle between two totally opposing states: freedom and unfreedom. Furthermore, a decision always pertains to a particular situation, and cannot in any sense be made in advance, since it is tied to contextual singularity and complexity. Jones (2004) found this notion of decision useful in making difficult decisions with regard to various translational situations and dilemmas he was involved in as a translator. We could also envisage applying it to the translation researcher. Research, like all else in life, involves making decisions at many levels: what topic to research, what theoretical and methodological approaches to adopt, what questions to investigate, what perspective to adopt on specific issues, how to use examples, and so forth. From a Derridian point of view, when undertaking a piece of research the translation researcher would always take into account pre-existing beliefs and concepts, but put them into question, weighing them up along with a multiple number of other considerations that are relevant in a specific situation. After a process of decision-making the researcher would come out with a decision as to the perspective to adopt with regard to a particular issue, whether that be the overall stance to adopt in the piece of research, or the stance to be taken for discussion of individual examples. A piece of research would involve numerous such decisions. According to the notion of the Derridian just decision, a researcher should never be a slave to pre-existing beliefs, but on
7. In French the term juste has a double meaning, since it refers both to accuracy and ethics.

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the other hand it is absolutely necessary to make decisions, including ethical decisions, in particular contexts. The researcher must thus be strongly engaged in some way, but at the same time must remain self-critical. The Derridian approach accepts that researchers are embedded within ideologies, beliefs, and preferences of various kinds, but asserts that they are not prisoners, since researchers can and should constantly question their own beliefs in the face of each new situation in which a decision has to be made. Research would be a matter of making committed local decisions. In this way translation researchers could combine the openness to multiple perspectives advocated by Hermans, and the engagement that is essential for Baker and Tymoczko. The strengths of descriptive and committed approaches in translation research would be combined. The University of Manchester, UK

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Tymoczko, M. 1999. Translation in a postcolonial context: Early Irish literature in English translation . Manchester: St Jerome Publishing. */*/*/. 2000. Translation and political engagement: Activism, social change and the role of translation in geopolitical shifts. The Translator 6(1): 23/47. */*/*/. 2003. Ideology and the position of the translator: In what sense is a translator in between? In Apropos of ideology, edited by Maria Calzada Perez. pp. 181/201. Manchester: St Jerome Publishing. Venuti, L. 1995. The translators invisibility: A history of translation . London & New York: Routledge. Wolf, M. 2000. The Third Space in postcolonial representation. In Changing the terms: Translating in the postcolonial era, edited by Sherry Simon and Paul St Pierre. pp. 127/45. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press.