The Pivotal Status of
the Translator's Habitus*
Daniel Simeoni
York University (Toronto) Abstract: The paper explores the possibility of nudging theory away from the
properties of systemic constructs towards the main focus of translation norms,
<, the translator. The current model of DTS could be reframed, or 'translated'
in a topological n, by giving it a slightly different slant on the assumption of
a translating habitus understood as: (culturally) pre-structured and structuringdogfight
agent mediating cultural artefacts in the cour of transfer. A discussion of the
translator's endorment of subrvience is included, followed by a brief
genealogy of the concept of habitus. A prospectus for future rearch in product
analysis and the acquisition of translatorial competence is also sketched out.
Résumé: Le versant théorique de la traductologie descriptive met habituelle-
2015考研国家分数线ment l'accent sur les fonctions systémiques des grandes unités culturelles lors
certificate
des opérations de transfert. Mais qu'advient-il lorsque l'angle d'obrvation
resitue l'agent porteur de ces opérations, le traducteur, au centre du processuspitchfork
de transformation? Les dimensions à la fois structurées et structurantes de
l'habitus du traducteur, l'allégeance assumée par ce dernier au regard des
autorités établies, les conséquences d'un tel recadrage tant pour l'analy
comparative que pour les processus d'acquisition sont ici tour à tour abordées.
L'ébauche d'une généalogie conceptuelle de la notion d'habitus complète cette
contribution.
The object I am concerned with in this paper is the ability to perform translation in acceptable ways. Specifically, I am in arch of an improved conceptualization to help account for:
(a) the myriad determining choices made by translators in the cour
of translating;
(b) why it is that, as we register intuitively when reading them, transla-
tors' styles differ consistently from one another (and from the
authors', who voices they report);
Target 10:1 (1998), 1-39. DOI 10.1075/target.l0.1.02sim
ISSN 0924-1884 / E-ISSN 1569-9986 © John Benjamins Publishing Company
2 DANIEL SIMEONI
(c) ultimately, the dynamics of the complex of inner/outer forces that
coheres in the cour of apprenticeship, to shape the style and
overall skills of a single translator.
In other words: What drives the translator's decisions in practice, and how can this be?
1. Background: Cognition in Practice
Translating being an experti who enactment always occurs for particular reasons in a particular context, it is worth inquiring into the acquisition of a translator's style and skills in terms of their complex cognitive development. This rais of cour the issue of the angle from which to study this cognitive emergence.
In the human sciences today, the global idea of cognition tends to be implemented from two such angles, each with its own t of preconceptions. One group of practices coheres around what could be called: the biological view of the mind. Its two offshoots are in (i) neurology; (ii) experimental psychology. Another perspective, equally founded in theory, is that of the 'cultural mind'. To quote the developmental psychologist Jerome Bruner (1990: 12) quoting the anthropologist Clifford Geertz: "There is no such thing as human nature independent of culture". While it is plausible to project tho two orientations as a possible two-pronged strategy for Translation Studies — provided minimal conditions of cooperation are met and each side is mindful of the other's progress — I would
still argue for the precedence of culturalist studies over biologically inspired mentalist work. This formulation may be en to come clo in spirit to Gideon Toury's otherwi more categorical stance, from the perspective of a function-oriented Descriptive Translation Studies:
there is little point in a process-oriented study of whatever type, unless the
瘦的英语怎么读cultural-miotic conditions under which it occurs are incorporated into it.
(Toury 1995: 13)
To engage in a more refined conceptualization of the cognitive tasks of the translator from a cultural perspective is not a value-free decision at a time when substantial resources are being made available for the more applied branches of inquiry, bad on methodologies and models that may not be the
THE PIVOTAL STATUS OF THE TRANSLATOR'S HABITUS 3 best suited, given the inherent unreductibility of their object. For reasons still
partly unclear, whole ctors of the rearch community em to have clod
their eyes lately on the socio-symbolic, reprentational and interactive reali-
ties of cognition in the wider world of practice. The focus is now instead on
the black box of cognition, the wiring that permits the transmission of infor-
mation in real time, across cultural perspectives, across socio-economic divides, across historical periods. Most of what goes on under the heading of cognitive science today rests on the strong hypothesis that the inner workings
of the mind of Homo sapiens can be studied independently of its socio-cultural environment. Inevitably, in the process, the surrounding context is
being whittled away, reduced under experimental conditions to the status of controlled variables, or more vexatiously still, lamented as sheer 'noi', acknowledged by default, then swept away from the analytical frame, caeteris paribus. The problem with this approach is that many of the determi-
nants of cognition-in-practice are ignored, that could profitably reorient re-
arch towards more realistic — and not necessarily humbler — goals.
The background position taken in this paper is that if such a finding as a translatorial mind (or mindt) is to be identified, it should draw its evidence
first and foremost from the variety of ttings in which the task is, and has been, performed. Most importantly, we should avoid conflating the notion of translation as enforced practice — which is what all prerved fossils of attested translation for the last five thousand years have amounted to — with
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the dubious presupposition of a pure, specific faculty of translating, unsullied
kindergartenby the circumstances under which it operates.
It is also hoped, through this effort, that Translation Studies may contrib-
ute an improved understanding of the continuum of rearch linking psychosocial inquiry to hermeneutic investigation, and clarify the relation of
theory to practice.
2. A Behaviourist Model of Skill Acquisition
The recently published Descriptive Translation Studies and beyond by Gideon Toury (henceforth abbreviated as DTS & beyond) is an ambitious,
wide-ranging attempt to bring the focus of theory to bear on translating practices. Although other scholars have entertained views that overlap with,
or complement his (some of them acknowledged in DTS & beyond), his work
4 DANIEL SIMEONI
is by far the most explicit defence and illustration of what can be called the cultural approach to translation matters. Toury himlf makes it clear in his introduction that he es his effort as an incentive for further discussion: "Far from wishing to attain general agreement, my intention is to stir a debate" (p.
5). The following argument is intended to be one such contribution.
My starting point is the developmental model prented in the chapter entitled: "Excursus C: The Making of a 'Native' Translator" (pp. 248-254). Earlier in the book, Toury had signalled his intention to begin to tread a domain of rearch still largely uncharted: "The process by which a bilingual speaker may be said to gain recognition in his/her capacity as a translator has hardly been studied so far" (p. 53). In Excursus C, described by its author himlf as "speculat[ive] at some length", "the
emergence [of translating] as a skill" (p. 248) is en as building and "qualitatively" expanding on a "predis-position" that is claimed to be "part and parcel of mankind's basic linguistic equipment" (p. 245; the latter quotation is from Wilss 1982).
Given the richness of the miotic substratum out of which DTS devel-oped and also the potential of his model to embrace larger anthropological and sociological concerns, it is not entirely clear why Toury opted for such a strict behaviourist perspective on acquisition. It is probably this contrast between the main argument of DTS and the way developmental process are prented in this chapter — a contrast still underscored by the author's rervations vis-à-vis what is prented as an excursus only — that impelled me to try and reframe or 'translate' (in a topological n) the model, giving it a slightly different slant on the assumption of a specific translating habitus (how specific being of cour the issue). Although the assumption points up in many places here and there in the book, it is neither fully spelled out nor developed.
I have suggested elwhere (Simeoni 1997) that Toury's model of DTS, while elaborating on Holmes's 1972 visionary map of the field of Translation Studies, also brought considerable revisions to the original landscape. Holmes's conceptualization itemized the various branches of the future disci-pline as equal partners in a common venture. Toury's original blend of Jakobsonian structuralis
driller
m and classic empirism raid function-oriented re-arch to pivotal status, a higher node in the tree of knowledge constitutive of the discipline. In the new scheme, function-oriented rearch not only domi-nates product- and process-oriented inquiry; it also governs the applied and theoretical branches. In a topological n then, Toury's reading is already a
THE PIVOTAL STATUS OF THE TRANSLATOR'S HABITUS 5 subversive translation of Holmes's original cast which goes a long way towards implementing the vision peripherally projected by Holmes in the
same article (1988: 72), of a "socio-translation studies". The question is, can
DTS sustain yet another subversive manipulation, on the way to this desirable
goal?
flyawayIn my reading of the tentative model described in DTS & beyond, trans-
lator interaction with the "environment" (p. 248) takes the shape of a ries of incremental stages, starting with initiation and ending up with recognition by
peers and others of his/her full-fledged competence (pp. 249ff.). Thus do learners become trained, step by step, in the skills of the profession. We are
led to visualize a slow process of inculcation, emphasizing the translator's gradual relief from the shackles of external pressures as s/he internalizes normative behaviour ever more deeply in his or her practice. This interplay of constraints on the activity of translating is valuable, for it gives us a n of
the kind of limitations to be expected from a purely mentalistic approach to translating. Tho constraints are of cour social ("environmental circum-stances" in Toury's words, p. 246). Only by becoming internalized do they
give an impression of being part of the mental apparatus of the translator. The surface manifestations that we study as translation scholars — translations as
end-results of constraining process — are typically entwined, both mental
and social products.
Interestingly, the constraints identified and operationalized by Toury for
the special ca of translation are also tho mentioned by Norbert Elias in his sociological approach to "the problems of humanity, and accordingly to the problem of civilization" at the basis of his influential theory of Civilizing process (Elias 1996: 32-33). Except for the (biological) "constraints im-
pod on people by the characteristics of their animal nature" and tho entailed by the natural environment ("non-human natural circumstances"),
Elias saw two major types of constraints to which all humans are expod: "constraints by other people" which he calls "Fremdzwänge", and "lf-constraints . . . actualized [on the basis of our biological makeup but distinct
开倒车from them since they are conveyed to us] through learning and experience".
The lf-constraints he refers to as "Selbstzwänge", noting further that "patterns of lf-constraints which develop as a result of differing experi-
ences are highly dissimilar". Elias had in mind macro-influences of the kind people brought up and educated in different nation-states ("state-societies" in
his words) inherit and internalize as a matter of routine socialization. On that
