The Translator . V olume 7, Number 2 (2001), 139-154 ISBN 1-900650-50-9
Proposal for a Hieronymic Oath
ANDREW CHESTERMAN University of Helsinki, Finland
Abstract. Four current models of translation ethics are described,bad on the ideas of reprentation, rvice, communication and norms. There are problems with all the models: they are in veralrespects incompatible, and have different ranges of application. An alternative approach is therefore offered bad on Alasdair MacIntyre’s ideas about virt ues and the deontic force of excellencein a social practice. This leads to a fifth possible model, an ethicsof professional commitment, comparable with Maria Tymoczko’ssuggestion that translation is a commissive act. At the centre of such a model there might be an official oath, comparable to the Hyppocratic Oath for the medical profession. I end with a pro- posal for a Hieronymic Oath for translators.
防火安全图片In the Hopi Indian culture, the Spider Grandmother is the mythical figurewho overes the spiritual development of humankind. She gave two basicethical rules, not just to Hopis but to all humanity. “She said, ‘Don’t go aroundhurting each other,’ and she said, ‘Try to understand things’” (Heat-Moon1984:187).
The two ethical principles – one negative and one positive – may takeus a long way toward an ethics of translation. This paper first offers an analy-sis of the current state of affairs, and then offers an alternative proposal.
1. Four current models of translation ethics
I will start by crystallizing the multiplicity of ideas about translation ethicsinto four basic models. There are overlaps between some aspects of themodels, but I will mostly disregard them here.
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Ethics of reprentation. This model of translation ethics goes way back tothe ideal of the faithful interpreter, and to the translation of sacred texts. Theethical imperative is to reprent the source text, or the source author’sintention, accurately, without adding, omitting or changing anything. Acontemporary manifestation of this ethic is to be found in the EU translationrvices: political reasons dictate that EU documents in whatever official EU language are legally equivalent to any other language version, perfect repre-ntatives of each other, and that no single version is privileged as a sourcetext, in theory (for a detailed discussion of the EU translation situation, eKoskinen 2000a).
Another line of inheritance of this ethic has to do with the long traditionof reprenting the Other, the
relation with alterity. It comes to the fore par-ticularly during the German Romantic movement and in subquent theoreticalcontributions stressing the value of allowing the Other to appear in its ownlight, without being domesticated: cf. the general arguments of Schleier-macher, Berman (e.g. 1984) and Venuti (e.g. 1995). The theoretical positionsstress that every translation is an interpretation and inevitably incorporatesdifference. The translator ’ s ethical dilemma is then how to choo and trans-mit a good – or the best – interpretation. To reprent is to interpret.
If a translation mis reprents the Other, the result may be a prejudiced,biad, ideologically旧手机通讯录怎样快速导入新手机
suspect version, which has unethical conquences forintercultural perceptions and relations. An ethics of reprentation thushighlights the values of fidelity and truth: the translator must reprent thesource text, or source author ’ s intention, or even the source culture, faithfullyand truly, like a good mirror. So-called ‘ abusive fidelity ’ (Lewis 1985) allowsthe Other to appea r as Other, as different, in a foreignizing or minoritizingtranslation. Postmodern approaches problematize the possibility of faithfulreprentation and stress the ambivalence of the relations between sourceand target texts and cultures (e, for example, Koskinen 2000b), but heretoo the central ethical problem is fundamentally one of reprentation, of something ‘ standing for ’ something el. In this n, the reprentationmodel of ethics is actually a miotic one: a translation is a sign of the original.
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Ethics of rvice. A very different kind of approach is bad on the conceptof translation as a commercial rvice, performed for a client. This is thekind of ethics that underlies (usually implicitly) much of the thinking onfunctional models of translation, especially tho of Holz-M äntt äri (1984)and the Skopos theorists. A translator is deemed to act ethically if thetranslation complies with the instructions t by the client and fulfils the aimof the translation as t by the client and accepted or negotiated by thetranslator. A prime quality of good translator-rvants is thus loyalty; theyare loyal above all to the client, but also to the target readers and to the originalwriter (cf. Nord 1991:29). They are also efficient (they do not waste time ormoney –especially the client ’ s), and perhaps also as invisible as possible.They provide a commercial rvice, and clients expect value for money. Anethics of rvice also underlines the value of time, of meeting deadlines, etc.
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Ethics of communication. This general model of ethics has received moreattention during the late 20th century, for example in the work of Levinas.Here the emphasis is not on reprenting the Other but on communicating with others. To recognize the Other as a ‘ subject ’ , with whom one can in-deed communicate, is a primary ethical act, for Levinas, becau this steptakes you out of your own ego-confined world (for an accessible but verybrief introduction to Levinas, e Melby 1995:119f.; e also Levinas 1982,1987). In translation theory, the focus is naturally on communicating acrosslinguistic or cultural boundaries.
A recent contribution that highlights the ethical aspects of such commu-nication is that of Pym (1997, 2000; for a detailed critique e Koskinen2000b). For Pym, the goal of cross-cultural communication is the mutualbenefit deriving from cooperation, and the ethical goal of translation is tofurther intercultural cooperation between parties who are “ Other ” to eachother. An ethical translator therefore translates in such a way as to optimizethis cooperation. (An ethical translator might also decide, notes Pym, that itwould sometimes be more beneficial not to translate at all, but recommendsome other means of eventually communicating, such as learning the otherlanguage.) An ethical translator ’ s primary loyalty, on this view, is to the trans-lator ’ s profession, situated in an intercultural space, and hence to the wholesystem that makes cross-cultural communication possible, rather than to sourcetext or culture or to target readers or culture. For Pym, the investment intranslation (by client or translator) should not exceed the eventual mutualbenefits accruing – here his position is similar to that taken by an ethics of rvice.
From the point of view of communication, the ethical translator is a me-diator working to achieve cross-cultural understanding. Understanding of what? Of each other, ultimately. But this is achieved via an understanding of texts, messages, signs, intentions, meanings, etc. There is a well-known con-ceptual minefield here, which I will not explore in this context, but with respectto translation we c
心如磐石an ufully speak of understanding in the following n:understanding a translation means arriving at an interpretation that is com-patible with the communicative intention of the author and the translator (andin some cas also the client), to a degree sufficient for a given purpo.
Norm-bad ethics. This model of translation ethics has arin either explic-itly or implicitly from descriptive translation studies and norm theory.Following Toury (e.g. 1995), descriptive translation studies investigates thenorms that determine or influence translation production and reception. Thenorms state what acceptable translation products should look like, and howthey vary from period to period and from culture to culture. The norms thusreprent expectations, mainly in the target culture, about what translationsare suppod to be like in that culture at that time. The norms are generallyaccepted (in a particular culture) insofar as they appear to rve prevailingvalues, including ethical values such as truth and trust (e Chesterman1997:169f.). Behaving ethically thus means behaving as one is expected tobehave, in accordance with the norms, not surprising the reader or client.
Any major breach of the expectations – for instance, a translation that isclearly more literal than the reader might expect, or one that has a specificideological slant, or is abridged or extensively adapted – should, on this view,be signalled overtly by the translator, for example in a preface. One of
thecentral values underlying this model is that of trust: if translators behave inpredictable, norm-conforming ways, it is easier to trust them – and the pro-fession as a whole.
2. Problems
There are veral reasons for the current unea in translation studies aboutquestions of ethics. One is the lack of compatibility between available mod-els. Each of the four models outlined above highlights different ethical values:truth (reprentation), loyalty (rvice), understanding (communication), trust(norm-bad). Are some values higher than others? In the n that somemay depend on or promote others, the answer to this question is perhaps ‘ yes ’ . People who speak the truth are more likely to be trusted than thowho do not. People who are loyal are also likely to be trusted by tho whomthey are loyal to (but not necessarily by outsiders; indeed, an outsider mighthave good reason not to trust them). Truth and trust may lead to understand-ing. However, none of the models is very clear about what the appropriatelyethical action might be in a situation where values (or loyalties) clash. Onwhat grounds can we simply say: choo this model when it ems appropri-ate, and that model at other times? Would such a solution itlf be ethical?
The different models do nevertheless have different scopes and limita-tions of application: some mo
dels have been applied more to literary or Biblicaltranslation, others to technical or administrative translation. The reprenta-tion model is vulnerable to arguments about the impossibility of totally truereprentation, about the relative status of originals and translations, aboutthe illusion of perfect equivalence. How might it be applied to translationtasks that call for
radical rewriting or adaptation or improvement to the text?For some scholars, the reprentation model nevertheless ems to be theonly one, since ethical problems are sometimes discusd almost entirelyfrom this angle (for example, Lane-Mercier 1997).未来生活
The rvice model stress the translator ’ s experti, but also ems tomake a virtue of translatorial invisibility, weakening the translator ’ s autonomyto some extent. One might even argue that it can promote a mercenary atti-tude and a meek and passive habitus. How might it be applied to a freelancetranslator initiating the translation of an avant-garde Italian poet?
The communication model risks expanding the translator ’ s responsibilityto cover aspects of cross-cultural relations that may have more to do withclients and readers than with the translator. Suppo the cross-cultural un-derstanding and cooperation is successful but promotes evidently unethicalends, as for instance in the task of translating instructions for making a cheap nail-bomb? Is
this also the translator ’ s responsibility? How do we apply com-munication ethics to an EU situation in which a document may not betranslated in order to be actually read by anyone, but simply in order to existlegitimately, for political and ideological reasons, in another language?
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The norm-bad model ems unduly conrvative, underplaying the pos-sibility of change or improvement; but norms do change over time, partly asa result of translatorial action. How might it be applied to a situation where atranslator – perhaps even as requested by the client – eks to surpri thereaders, to challenge their expectations, and wishes to strengthen this effectby declining to include a warning preface?
A further difficulty is the way different models focus on different levelsof ethics. The norm-bad model and to some extent the reprentation modeloperate mainly on the micro-ethical level, concerning the relation betweenthe translator and the text. The other models look more to the macro-ethicallevel, at the relation between the translator and the wider world. How are weto decide where the ethical responsibility of the translator stops – or does itstop at all? Translators are of cour responsible for the words they choo towrite, but to what extent are they responsible for the effects the words mayhave? On what readers? Readers may be other than intended ones, after all;and readers of some future generation may react very differently to the samewords. Many scholar
s over the past few years have pointed to the wider cul-tural and ideological implications of translatorial decisions. How do we definethe limits of the translator ’ s responsibility?
And what of the world ’ s responsibility towards translators? This aspecttoo might be considere d to belong to a general ethics of translation andtranslatorial behaviour (e, for instance, UNESCO ’ s Nairobi Recommen-dation). However, I shall not pursue this theme in this article.
Our four models also differ with respect to the basic kinds of ethics theyespou. The rvice and norm-bad models are both examples of contrac-tual ethics. That is, ethical decisions here are bad on prior agreements,contracts, expectations, either explicit or internalized; unethical decisions arecriticized becau they break a norm or contract. So I act like this becauthis is the norm, becau this is the way the provider of a rvice shouldbehave, this is what the translation instructions say. On the other hand, thereprentation and especially the communication models
are examples of utili-tarian ethics. That is, ethical decisions are bad on their predicted results;unethical decisions can be criticized becau of their undesired results. So Iact like this becau I want to facilitate communication, or to improve cross-cultural relations: I want to have this kind of effect on you, the reader.
A good illustration of the problem of incompatible ethical models is to befound in the different interpretations of the value of clarity. For many trans-lators, clarity is an ethical value that they ek to promote in their work. It isan ethical value for many theorists too, mylf included; and even for trans-lation rvice administrators –e, for example, the current ‘ Fight the Fog’campaign in the EU, which eks to promote clarity both in original docu-ments and in translations. To be unclear is felt to be a betrayal of loyalty tothe reader, and also to the client, who presumably wishes readers to under-stand a translation. Popper (1945/1962:308) has even argued that clarity is aprecondition for all rational communication, without which society cannotexist. But what is meant by clarity?
Different interpretations are offered by our different models of ethics. Inthe reprentation model, clarity means transparency: the translation shouldbe such that the original is clearly visible, the Other is clearly prent, repre-nted as such, undistorted. This would usually lead to some kind of foreignizing translation. On the other hand, if the desired reprentation is of the author ’ s intention rather than the source text as such, it is this intentionthat should presumably be made transparently visible, and the result mightwell be a domesticating translation. Returning to the mirror metaphor, claritymeans that the mirror must be clean and non-distorting, reflecting whateverit is intended to reflect (intended by whom?).
In the rvice and commmunication models, clarity is interpreted as ac-cessibility. This is a textual quality determining the ea with which readerscan understand a text, its meaning, the message, the author ’ s intention. Aclear translation, in this n, is one that can be understood without unduetime and effort. Here, the degree of clarity affects the relation between trans-lation and reader, not translation and original.
In the norm-bad model, clarity is relativized to target culture expecta-tions: the form and degree of the required clarity depends on theexpectations. Critics of suggestions that clarity is a universal communicationvalue usually interpret cl arity as meaning ‘ directness ’ , i.e. the abnce of features such as irony or understatement. The critics then accu Grice orLeech, for instance, of making Western Protestant discour values intouniversals. None of our ethical models em to take this view of clarity, how-ever. Indeed, the norm-bad model specifically rejects it. This model says:be as clear as the situation demands, in the way that your readers will expect.In other words, do not be so unclear that your text is unacceptably inaccessi-ble to the people whom you would like to read it. The model stress that theimplementation of the value of clarity is context-bound and also culture-bound.
All in all, the four models are only partial ones; each covers only part of the general ethical field of
translation, and each ems therefore inadequateon its own. Maybe we should go back to the beginning and start again. Thefollowing ction explores an alternative route to an ethics of
