Translation As A Socio-Cultural Phenomenon: Manipulation By Power And Ideology

Translation is admittedly an interlingual transference of meaning. Traditional theories on translation have all grown out of this presupposition, to produce such idealistic concepts as "equivalence", "reproduction", "faithfulness", "fidelity", "accuracy", "transparency", etc.. However, the problem is that, in reality, "pure" transports of "perpetual" meaning can never be possible, because, in the course of translating, the original language structure is broken and substituted by a new one in the receptor language, and the "signifiers" in the original are transplanted to a new cultural "soil" with a new "climate" of cognition. Therefore, translation seems to be much more than merely an interlingual transference of meaning.The post-structural philosophy opened up new horizon for translation studies by deconstructing the concept of "meaning". It proposed that meaning is not singular or static, but open and constantly evolving. According to Jacques Derrida, meaning is the free play of "differance" between "signifiers" in different texts. In other words, meaning is formed by "intertextuality" ("dialogicity" in Bakhtin's term). This served as an emancipating force for translation studies. As a result, translation is increasingly being seen as a meaning-constructing and culture-shaping force against its socio-cultural backdrop.Since the "cultural turn" in translation studies in the 1990s, explanations of the phenomenon of translation have been sought from extra-textual factors. For example, Andre Lefevere argued that translation is rewriting, manipulated by ideology, poetics and patronage. Based on a full discussion of the theoretical issues shown above, the author proposed translation as a socio-cultural phenomenon manipulated by power and ideology. First, he reviewed previous theorization on power and made an in-depth analysis of major power relations in translation. Then, he briefly examined previous theories on ideology and discussed the correlations between power, ideology and translation. Finally, a case study, both diachronic and textual, was undertaken to test the validity of the proposed model.