Professional Documents
Culture Documents
will be laws applicable in linguistics, and linguistics will thus be assigned to a clearly defined place in
the field of human knowledge.
Te implication for translators should be clear: rather than simple strings of words, we translate a source
communicative act into another communicative act taking place in a different situational context.
Such communicative acts are made up of a series of variables, like the means of communication,
reception, or even the channel through which communication takes place. Language is one of the
variables that changes. For translation students this is, by far, the most important of the variables, but
in the context of this unit we shall treat all variables as equivalent in order to emphasize the idea of
language as communicative act.
Ambivalence: Eco and the Open work
Once we have acknowledged the need for social anchoring in any communicative
statement, our second step to move into a cultural studies framework will be to
acknowledge that communicative statements dont have just one clear meaning. This
will be particularly true in literary texts.
it is read according to those frameworks. One does not go to an opera with the same expectations as to
a mainstream film or a musical. Assumptions and reading attitudes are different in each case.
But what Williams suggests is that this is an ideological distortion of the original meaning. In associating
culture to the values of aristocracy it makes common people more vulnerable, and they are forced to
leave the discourses or attitudes they are familiar with, exchanging them for higher ones.
For Williams, culture is a more objective (i.e. less ideological) concept: it is all the systematic
discourses generated by a society or a civilization that somehow are used in symbolic exchanges. So,
certainly musical theatre, mainstream cinema and pulp fiction are culture as much as opera, avantgarde art or high literature. But also football and sports, Big Brother broadcasts and the Valencian Fallas.
Each text is run through by ideologies and for a social scientist no kind of text should be preferred in
terms of their higher qualities. Symbolism surrounding the ritual of football is as relevant to study what
is at stake in our culture as the work of Javier Maras.
Culture as discourse
For translators, it is useful to regard culture not just as a set of practices, but as a set of (more or less
abstract) discourses which produce practices. This idea will be explored with examples in unit 9.
Discourses are configured in a certain way, they are, to use a term discussed earlier in the module,
structured in a certain way. There are rules to discourse. Discourses aim to achieve something in
particular, so they have a function. Looking at culture as discourse will help us identify specific areas
which the translator would be advised to look at. Cultural discourses are expressed in texts implicitly.
Knowing those cultural discourses will add new layers of meaning to the text which the translator will
be able to draw from.
Examples of cultural discourses:
Gender discourses: the way gender is expressed in society is relevant when dealing with artistic texts.
Well see how dealing with narrative characters, gender mythologies will be used to create motivation
and character effects. Recognizing gender structures, even myths and clichs, will help us pin down, for
instance, characters as Marilyn Monroes Lorelei in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
Political discourses: Recently there has been research on how politics is entangled with processes of
translation. It is not just about understanding the political other, but creating a certain point of view
in translation. In news reporting, word choices like Derry (from Londonderry) or The West Bank
are politically charges, and translators, whether they like it or not, end up reinforcing a vision which is
inescapably political.
Example 2
On October 26, 2005, IRIB News, an English-language subsidiary of the state-controlled Islamic
Republic of Iran Broadcasting, reported a speech made by the Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad's at the "World Without Zionism" conference in Asia. The article was entitled:
Ahmadinejad: Israel must be wiped off the map. The story was picked up by Western news agencies
and quickly made headlines around the world. Of course, careful reading of the original Arabic showed
that this was just one of the possible translations (another possibility would have been: Imam
[Khomeini] said: This regime that is occupying Qods [Jerusalem] must be eliminated from the pages of
history.), and it had been chosen because it presented Iranians as particularly aggressive and hostile.
But also it failed to see what was a conventional metaphor in Arabic, rendering it literally without any
counterbalancing explanations. Of course, the headline created angry reactions amongst Western
politicians.
Artistic discourses: Although there is no clear, final definition of what artistic discourses are (and
this would include both literature and film), it is more or less clear that treating a text as artistic
imposes certain conditions on the translator. One will need to look at things like connotation, genre,
rhythm and other aspects which would be unnecessary if the text was just aiming to communicate
information transparently.
Those discourses are articulated through conventions. More than mere rules, conventions tend to be
implicit. They are a set of notions widely accepted and deeply assimilated by people who are submerged
in discourses.
Conventions in film narrative will be the subject of units 5, 6 and 7.
Example 3
For instance, it is a convention in Western societies that pink is associated to girls. Or dressing in black
in funereal situations. Or shaking ones hand at greeting. Or saying goodbye when one leaves. Or using
certain expressions if one is male. Or liking certain discourses according to ones position in terms of
gender, class or politics.
Thinking in terms of cultural conventions can help translators in two ways:
1. by recognizing them, understanding better what the text is about
(Example: to what extent a film is stereotyping a character by making him
or her dress in culturally significant ways).
Example 4
In terms of literature, the XIX Century realist novel is one such example of classical art. Novels by Balzac,
George Eliot, Zola, Tolstoy or Dickens are intented to mean something very precise; they carefully
explain events (sometimes at great length) so that there is as little ambivalence as possible. Avant-garde
art, however, was a reaction towards the certainties of Realism and is irreducible to explanation or one
simple meaning.
In terms of film narrative, it is important to distinguish between classical cinema and non classical
form. Classical, in these units is not old but an approach to making films that follows a clear set of
conventions in order to produce precise meanings. Most films of the Hollywood Studio Era (roughly
from 1920 to 1960) were classical, but so are many contemporary films that address mass audiences.
Example 5
Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) is a good example of classical film in all senses outlined: framings are
tight and well centered, the narrative has a clear conclusion, the structure is logical.
Classical texts are linked to some kind of degree zero writing. We shall explore this concept when we
study style in Unit 4.
Conventions and the journalistic text
Lets look at a news piece:
Spains government will this weekend finally make a formal request for the
bailout money it needs to prop up ailing banks as frustration grows about footdragging by prime minister Mariano Rajoy's conservative government.
Finance minister Luis de Guindos, who on Thursday pledged to make the
request immediately, has now told the Eurogroup of eurozone finance
ministers that they will have it by Monday.
The Eurogroup president Jean-Claude Juncker had already stated that the
group expected to have the request, which de Guindos had described as "a mere
formality", in its hands on Monday.
Juncker said eurozone ministers had tried to hurry Spain up, inviting it to "pursue (a) clear and
ambitious strategy, which needs to be implemented swiftly and communicated early."
Spain will base its request on two independent valuations of its banks which suggest the sector needs
up to 62bn (49bn) to see it through the next three years if the economy takes an even sharper turn
for the worse. Spain has been offered up to 100bn in help for its banks alone. It was not clear whether
the weekend's petition would include an exact sum of money.
Spain's latest foot-dragging follows its slowness in recognising the hole caused by toxic real estate in
some of its banks after a property bubble exploded four years ago.
It also reflects Rajoy's refusal to call the loans being offered to Spain a "bailout", even though the money
will be loaned to the state and then passed on to the banks.
Rajoy's government now hopes that a growing clamour for future rescues of Europe's banks to be done
directly, without money going via governments, may still allow it to avoid accepting loans that would
add to an already fast-growing national debt.
Among its salient features, we can identify the following:
Short, clear sentences
1.
2.
3.
4.
5. Tightly logical structure: each sentence leads to the next, each paragraph leads to the paragraph
that comes after.
These qualities need to be known and practiced by anybody who
would like their text to be recognized and published as a news
item. In writing infused with conventions, individuality is less
important.
A word can connote certain things in one language, and have different resonances in another
Example 6: Sonnet 29 by Edna St Vincent Millay
Edna St Vincent Millay is one of the greatest American poets of the XX Century. Although her perspective
is contemporary, she chose to frame her thoughts in a classical form, the sonnet, and out of the
limitations of this form her sonnets achieve rare elegance.
Pity me not because the light of day
At close of day no longer walks the sky;
Pity me not for beauties passed away
From field to thicket as the year goes by;
Pity me not the waning of the moon,
Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea.
Nor that a man's desire is hushed so soon.
And you no longer look with love on me.
This have I known always: Love is no more
Than the wide blossom which the wind assails.
Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore.