Book Reviews

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BOOK REVIEWS Elbieta Wòjcik-Leese a a Jagiellonian University, Krakòw, Poland Online Publication Date: 15 March 2007

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Book Reviews

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Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account Mona Baker. London: Routledge, 2006. Pp. 208. ISBN 10: 0-415-38396-X (pbk): £20. ISBN 10: 0-415-38395-1 (hbk): £70. ISBN 10: 0-203-09991-5 (E-book): £20. Since 1992, Professor Mona Baker from the Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies at the University of Manchester has produced several notable works on translation
including In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation (1992) and the Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (chief editor, 1998)
which have exerted a tremendous influence on those interested in translation studies. Mona Baker’s latest publication, Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account (2006), rigorously examines the relation between translation, power and conflict from a narrative perspective and may constitute yet another turning point in Translation Studies. This groundbreaking volume demonstrates that translation is never merely a by-product of social and political developments, but a part of the institution of war, and examines the role played by translators and interpreters in mediating conflict and resisting the narratives that create the intellectual and moral environment for violent conflict. Drawing on narrative theory and using numerous examples from historical as well as contemporary conflicts, the author provides an original and coherent model of analysis that pays equal attention to the context of the circulation of narratives in translation, to translation and interpreting, and to political questions of dominance and resistance. This book includes seven chapters. In Chapters 1 and 2, the author gives a brief introduction of narrative theory particularly suited to investigating the way in which translators and interpreters function in situations of conflict. She points out the advantages of narrative theory to account for the interplay between translation, power and conflict. Mona Baker draws on the notion of narrative as elaborated in social and communication theory, rather than in narratology or linguistics, to explore the way in which translation and interpreting participate in these processes. Narratives, therefore, are understood as dynamic and open entities. According to this narrative theory, narratives not only represent social reality, but also constitute crucial means of generating, sustaining and negotiating conflict at all levels of social organisation. In view of the narrative perspective, the author discusses the political import of narratives, the interaction of resistance and dominance evident in the way narratives are illustrated and received, and the intimate relations between translation and political factors. In Chapter 3, Mona Baker discusses four types of narrative (ontological narratives, public narratives, conceptual or disciplinary narratives and metanarratives) and the way in which translators and interpreters mediate their circulation in society. Chapters 4 and 5 provide a profound and comprehensive analysis of the typology and features of narrativity, namely, the core features of temporality, relationality, causal emplotment and selective appropriation, and the supplementary features of particularity, genericness, normativeness and 57

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narrative accrual. The discussion of typology and features makes us further understand the complex ways in which narrativity mediates our experience of the world and its potential application in translation studies. In Chapter 6, the author combines the narrative theory and translation studies by way of the notion of frame as elaborated in the work of Goffman and the literature on social movements, focusing on four key strategies for translators, interpreters and other agents to accentuate, undermine or modify aspects of the narratives encoded in the source text or utterance, namely, ‘temporal and spatial framing’, ‘framing through selective appropriation’, ‘framing by labeling’ and ‘repositioning of participants’. She introduces the two important concepts of ‘frame ambiguity’ and ‘frame space’ and points out that the different and conflicting international parties can successfully achieve their political purposes by consciously using various strategies mentioned above, and that as translators are not neutral, they will adopt appropriate strategies to achieve their communicative purpose according to different contexts. Among the four strategies, Mona Baker highlights ‘framing through selective appropriation’ and ‘repositioning of participants’ and illustrates her points with a lot of examples. For example, in discussing the former strategy, she explains how in The Slave-King (1833), the first English translation of Victor Hugo’s novel Bug-Jargal (1826), with its troublingly ambiguous portrayal of slavery, slavery is now modified into a dastardly institution in need of eradication. In Chapter 7, Mona Baker gives an insightful analysis and appreciation of Walter Fisher’s influential narrative paradigm and points out its advantages: it allows us to assess a narrative elaborated in a single text as well as diffuse narratives that have to be pieced together from a variety of sources and media; it can also be used to assess any narrative: ontological, public or conceptual, whether elaborated by an individual or an institution. The author concludes with a critical review of translation studies from a narrative perspective and predicts the future development of this paradigm. The main features of this book are as follows. (1) It successfully gives a critical theoretical analysis, with rich corpus-based studies. (2) Many vivid pictures and fresh examples are used and illustrated in the book. (3) Suggestions for further reading are included at the end of each chapter so as to provide much more useful materials for those interested in translation studies, intercultural studies, sociology and history. (4) The book cover is so illuminating that it attracts a lot of readers. Equipped with all the above-mentioned qualities, this book is all in all a very useful and handy reference for learners and researchers interested in both cross-cultural studies and translation studies. Therefore, it is strongly recommended. doi: 10.2167/pstb001.0

Fan Min School of Foreign Languages and Literature Shandong University, China

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Children’s Literature in Translation: Challenges and Strategies Jan Van Coillie and Walter P. Verschueren (eds). Manchester: St Jerome Publishing, 2006. Pp. 190. ISBN 1-900650-88-6 (pbk): £22.50. For children who do not master foreign languages, translations are the sole means of entering into genuine contact with foreign literatures and cultures. Owing to translators’ efforts, ‘children all over the world can step through the magical looking-glass and venture into the beguiling world of Andersen’s fairy tales and Alice’s unexpected, mind-boggling Wonderland, or can indulge in the charmingly anarchistic fabrications of Pippi Longstocking, and
more recently
the thrilling, often spine-chilling, universe of Harry Potter’ (p. v). Today translating for children is increasingly recognised as a literary challenge in its own right, because translators are not only mediators who facilitate the negotiating ‘dialogue’ between source text and target audience, but also ones who hold a fragile, unstable middle position between the social forces that act upon them, their own interpretation of the source text and their assessment of the target audience; translators mediate, but to an important extent they also shape the image that young readers or listeners will have of the translated work. Children’s Literature in Translation: Challenges and Strategies is of great value because it tackles a long-neglected subfield of literary translation. It has endeavoured to explore the various challenges posed by the paradigmatic shift in research
its focus shifting from the source text to the target text
while at the same time highlighting some of the strategies that translators can and do follow when faced with challenges such as the impact of translational norms, the choice between foreignising and domesticating translation, and the dual audience (children and adults). Translating for children is no less demanding than translating ‘serious’ (adult) literature, and very often the creative, playful use of language is even more challenging as it requires a special empathy with the imaginative world of the child. Luckily, we now witness a significant growth in scholarly interest as well as the visibility gained by translators of children’s literature. The volume comprises 11 articles. The opening essay ‘The Translator Revealed’ reviews historical and contemporary prefaces to translated children’s books published in the UK. By analysing the prefaces by Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Howitt, Joan Aiken and Ann Lawson Lucas, Gillian Lathey concludes that, viewed historically, translators’ prefaces offer rare insights into the selection of texts for translation, developments in translation practices and changes in the image of the child reader. Therefore, she ends her essay with emphasising the significance of the translator’s position within the history of British children’s literature, for the reason that ‘there is the opportunity to exercise choice in the selection of texts for translation’ and ‘there is considerable evidence in these prefaces that translators are active and creative mediators’ (p. 16), thus trying to seek the voices of as many of these lost translators as possible and bring them to attention. The second essay, Rita Ghesquiere’s ‘Why Does Children’s Literature Need Translation?’, also working from a historical perspective, deals with how
in a polysystemic context
translations have helped children’s literature to fulfil a

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basic role in the establishment of literary canons. It reviews the present-day situation of children’s literature worldwide and discusses commercialisation and the dominance of Westernised books in order to answer the question whether the import of Western books is a hindrance to the development of native (non-Western) children’s literatures. Riitta Oittinen’s ‘No Innocent Act: On the Ethics of Translating for Children’ states that translating may be defined as rereading and rewriting for target audiences, and translating for children inevitably uses the domesticating strategy reflecting the ethics, values and norms of a given society that lie dormant in the translator’s personal child(hood) image. In her ‘Flying High
Translation of Children’s Literature in East Germany’, Gaby Thomson-Wohlgemut discusses how children’s books were selected so as to play a role in the creation of an ideal socialist society and how the translated books enjoyed a remarkably high status because of their important function in educating the masses. Vanessa Joosen, in her ‘From Breaktime to Postcards: How Aidan Chambers Goes (or Does Not Go) Dutch’, by analysing in depth the Dutch translations of the two novels, Breaktime and Postcards From No Man’s Land, draws our attention to the shift from focusing on Chambers’ (one of the most popular translated authors of adolescent fiction in Belgium and the Netherlands) use of taboo language to a greater awareness of his stylistic complexity (a mixture of Dutch and English), a particular challenge to the translator. Isabelle Desmidt’s ‘A Prototypical Approach within Descriptive Translation Studies? Colliding Norms in Translated Children’s Literature’ investigates to what extent a prototypical approach may help to define translation in an adequate way (both descriptive and specific), departing from Chesterman’s Default Prototype Concept. She calls for an adjustment or refinement of Chesterman’s model, as she believes that children’s literature should be translated in a specific way. Nevertheless she concludes that the prototype approach promises to remain a valuable future tool for translation studies. The next two essays state that traditionally, most translators of children’s literature held the belief that the source text should be adapted to the target culture in order to guarantee children readers a sufficient degree of recognisability and empathy. But today more and more translators choose to retain a degree of ‘foreignness’ in their translations because they want to bring children into contact with other cultures. In the essay ‘Translating Cultural Intertextuality in Children’s Literature’, Bele´n Gonza´lez-Cascallana explores culture-bound problems in translating children’s literature by focusing on the handling of cultural intertextuality in the Spanish translations of contemporary British children’s fantasy books. The author demonstrates that the translations discussed do not fully favour either domestication or foreignisation of source text features because while the translator’s aim is to ‘stay close to the source text and to expose the target child audience to the experience of the foreign text’ (p. 108), in other ways the translator does show a concern for the target readers’ comprehension and their ability to enjoy the presence of intertextuality. By applying the polysystem theory to studying the strategies found in an English and Spanish translation of a German youth novel, Isabel Pascua-Febles’ ‘Translating Cultural References: The Language of

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Young People in Literary Texts’ focuses on social and educational conventions and the way different translators address young readers through juvenile expressions and cultural markers such as diastratic and diaphasic varieties. In ‘Character Names in Translation’, Jan Van Coillie, by investigating the translation of personal names from a functional perspective, discusses how the translators’ choices can cause texts to function differently (via shifts occurring in their informative, educational, emotional, entertaining and creative function). His study also sheds a different light on the concept of functional equivalence, because factors other than text and translator ‘can have an impact on the translation of personal names’ (p. 136). The last two essays explore the ambivalent audience (young and adult readers). Anette Øster’s ‘Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales in Translation’ examines two English translations of Andersen’s fairy tales and shows how they are stripped of their double audience: not only are sexual overtones and irony removed, but also their richness of detail and linguistic fitness are lost
something at odds with the original, as Andersen himself was well aware of his double audience. In their paper, ‘Dual Readership and Hidden Subtexts in Children’s Literature’, Mette Rudvin and Francesca Orlati, by examining the translations of Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories into Norwegian and Italian, show that this double orientation (Rushdie’s novel can be read both as a fairy tale for children and as a political critique aimed at an adult readership) results in complex translation strategies. This raises a series of interesting translation issues such as ‘the micro-structural co-ordination of culture specificities, the macro-structural marketing policies dictating the translating strategies of the political subcontext through metaphor’ (p. 157), the status of the target reader, and the place of translators and translations within the polysystem and the wider social system. The book perfectly bridges the gap between theory and practice, which makes its arguments even more convincing. It has benefited greatly from theoretical developments in the fields of literary and translation studies, such as Itamar Even-Zohar’s polysystem theory, Gideon Toury’s concept of norms of translational behaviour, Lawrence Venuti’s concept of the translator’s (in)visibility and of foreignising and domesticating translations, Chesterman’s prototypical approach and the concept of the child(hood) image. And it applies the theories to such topics as the ethics of translating for children, the importance of child(hood) images, the ‘revelation’ of the translator in prefaces, the role of translated children’s books in the establishment of literary canons, the status of translations in former East Germany, questions of taboo and censorship in the translation of adolescent novels, the collision of norms in different translations of a Swedish children’s classic, the handling of ‘cultural intertextuality’ in the Spanish translations of contemporary British fantasy books, strategies for translating cultural markers such as juvenile expressions, functional shifts caused by different translation strategies dealing with character names, and complex translation strategies used in dealing with the dual audience in Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tales and in Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories. What impresses me most is that 10 out of the 12 authors are female, which poses an interesting question: why are so many women engaged in studying

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and translating children’s literature? To me, it might be due to their family role in society, their psychological makeup and their great maternal love for children. The list of contributors at the end of the book not only offers their academic background; it is also helpful for cross-national communication among translation researchers and practitioners. Now we are very interested in raising the translator’s status, but how? In this book the essay ‘Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales in Translation’ is written by Anette Øster (in Danish) and translated by Don Bartlett. However, the author’s name is put at the beginning of the essay and the translator’s at the end. I don’t think it appropriate to treat the author and the translator differently. I maintain that we translators or translation researchers ourselves should be the first to put authors and translators in the same place because they are of the same importance. If even we don’t do this, why should others? I propose that both the author’s and the translator’s names should be placed at the beginning of the essay in order to demonstrate their equal status. The journals and books published in China such as Chinese Translators’ Journal set a good example in this respect. In conclusion, the anthology under review is extremely useful; it is one of the few books on children’s literature in translation, and it reflects the recent developments in this special field. It offers excellent guidance and orientation to students of children’s literature in translation, and although its essays explore children’s literature in translation in a Western context, it is also of great significance in an international context. doi: 10.2167/pstb002.0

Xu Jianzhong College of Foreign Languages Tianjin University of Technology, China

The Discourse of Court Interpreting: Discourse Practices of the Law, the Witness and the Interpreter Sandra Beatriz Hale. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2004. Pp. xviii265. Europe: ISBN 90 272 1658 4; USA: ISBN 1 58811 517 8 (hbk): t105/ US$126. The book under review deals with one of the most topical present-day fields of Translation Studies, i.e. the scholarly issues of court interpreting discourse. The hypothesis underlying the author’s study is that ‘interpreters are mostly concerned with maintaining accuracy of content alone, the ‘‘what’’ and not the ‘‘how’’’ (p. 238). This hypothesis has determined the aim of the book, which is seen in the analysis of the complex relationship between form and function within the context of interpreter-mediated speech (p. 7). Hence, the main focus of the monograph is the interpreting process delivery phase that, as the author states, ‘has been perhaps the most neglected one in the study and training’ (p. 5). The structure of the book is in concordance with the above aim and focus and is as follows: Chapter 1. Court Interpreting: The Main Issues; Chapter 2. Historical Overview of Court Interpreting in Australia; Chapter 3. Courtroom Questioning and the Interpreter; Chapter 4. The Use of Discourse Markers in

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Courtroom Questions; Chapter 5. The Style of the Spanish Speaking Witnesses’ Answers and the Interpreters’ Renditions; Chapter 6. Control of the Courtroom; Chapter 7. The Interpreters’ Response; Chapter 8. Conclusions. The monograph is prefaced by Acknowledgements and Introduction, and completed by Notes, References and Index. I definitely feel it should be noted to the author’s credit that one of the most successful parts is about the history of court interpreting in Australia. It would have been to still better advantage if Sandra Beatriz Hale made general references to the worldwide history of court interpreting, since as we all understand, it originated in 1945. This history is far from being too long and too complicated and there are initial facts really worth mentioning. However, even though the author confines herself to the history of interpreting in Australia, the chapter is informative and relevant. So, the first government interpreter service in Australia dates back to 1954, and since that time it has evolved to enact legislation on a person’s rights to the services of an interpreter in the states of Victoria and South Australia, while in other jurisdictions it is the presiding judicial officer who decides whether an interpreter is needed or not (Report on a National Language Policy (1984: 39) as quoted in Hale: 23). The most blossoming years for the interpreting trade were the 1980s, when the states had an institution that offered a Bachelor’s degree in the field. At present, only the University of Western Sydney offers degrees in legal interpreting
in nine languages (Hale: 26). The author points out that the study was conducted with 13 English
Spanish interpreted court hearings during the years 1993
1996. The figure of 13 hearings seems sufficient to arrive at a number of scholarly conclusions, one of the interesting being that tag questions are one of the things that cause interpreters most difficulty. The data show that interpreters omit the tag 53.12% of the time. The explanation is found in a wider range of tags in English as compared to Spanish, where tags are the invariant tag questions, such as (if translated into English) Isn’t that right? Right? True? Is it true? Is it correct? (pp. 44, 46). Another reason may be that not every rendition can maintain the same pragmatic force as the given source language tag. For example, to say ‘You saw him by accident, did you?’ is not the same as ‘You saw him by accident, true?’ According to Hale, ‘the first one is rectifying a false prior belief’ while ‘the second one is stating what the speaker believes to be the case and asking for ratification of the same’ (p. 51). Still another problem is checking tags believed to be the most aggressive. When said with a falling intonation they present a strong assumption and expect an answer that agrees with that assumption (p. 52). Worthwhile information is provided concerning such discourse markers as ‘well’, ‘see’ and ‘now’. The author emphasises that the use of these markers varies according to the type of discourse: whether they appear in examinationin-chief or cross-examination. In examination-in-chief, they are used to maintain control of the flow of information and mark progression in the story. In cross-examination, they are used as markers of argumentation and confrontation that initiate disagreements or challenges (pp. 85, 86). The author also tackles psycholinguistic issues when she discusses the style of the Spanish-speaking witnesses’ answers and the interpreters’ renditions. It

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is assumed that there is a strong correlation between how people speak and how they impress their listeners in terms of their social status, personality, intelligence, trustworthiness and competence. Here she studies hesitations, repetitions, backtracking, pauses and hedges as well as grammatical errors in court interpreting discourse. Her data contain 1379 answers with a total number of 15,053 Spanish words (pp. 87, 95, 96). Hale concludes that the interpreted English shows a higher frequency of hesitations and grammatical errors, while there are fewer repetitions, backtrackings, pauses and hedges in the interpreted variant than in the original Spanish discourse. (I should like to mention right here that after all, repetitions, errors, backtrackings, etc. are all about hesitation: a speaker would not backtrack or make an understatement or whatsoever in case he/she were confident of the subject in case. So the chapter is positively about hesitations only, which should have been used as an umbrella term.) Moreover, the author writes that interpreters tend to constantly alter witnesses’ speech styles in their interpretations (p. 156). A challenging chapter is about how to keep power and control in the courtroom. If we accept the author’s approach, we should follow the following path: ‘a person’s power lies in his/her ability to control his/her own actions, and to control the actions of others, despite resistance. This book deals with the context of the courtroom, where there are clearly powerful and powerless participants’ (p. 159), the former being the lawyers and the bench who can ask questions and control the information, whereas the latter are witnesses, who must answer the question without digressing from the relevant themes (Atkinson & Drew 1979; Merry, 1990; Drew, 1992 as quoted in Hale: 160). However, this seems to be the field of psychology rather than Translation Studies or linguistics, although Hale states that ‘linguistic control has been said to be one important aspect of exercising power over others’ (Morris, 1949; Foucault, 1977; Pondy, 1978; Bourdieu, 1991 as quoted in Hale: 159). Of course, we cannot do without the language in many fields, like philosophy, philology, psychiatry, legal studies and psychology. Still, such issues are psychology, with linguistics as a runner-up there. As if to support my line, the author goes on to say that the ‘general rule is for all directive speech acts to originate with the powerful participants of the courtroom’ (p. 162). However, the chapter discloses that ‘although control is mostly held by the counsel, it sometimes shifts to the witness, to the interpreter and to the magistrate. Such power shifts were mostly a consequence of witness initiative and sometimes produced by the presence of the interpreter’
whose presence may sometimes interfere with the counsel’s strategies (p. 210). The author then tries to support her findings in an experimental part where she consults a group of interpreters through a questionnaire on the main issues of her book, for example interpreter renditions of ‘now’, ‘you see’, ‘well’, tag questions, etc. Hale’s conclusion at this part is as follows: the majority of respondents claim witnesses’ incoherence and colloquial speech to be the main cause of difficulty in interpreting. Generally, the results of the survey proved more positive than those of the authentic courtroom hearings (pp. 232
233). As I have quoted above, the author’s two main questions are ‘what’ and ‘how’. So a logical follow-up will be the big question ‘why’. I often ask this question which sounds irritating to some authors, for whatever reason.

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Anyway, I ask it to see what is there in the background that made the book possible, for one thing. For another (and that is what I should like to ask of Sandra Beatriz Hale), why has she thought it appropriate to put within one volume topics that should rather go in different books? The major part of the book is about ‘a micro analysis of questions and answers taken from Local Court hearings’ (p. 211). Fine, so let the monograph be on this theme, entitled ‘Questions, Markers and Hesitations in Court Interpreting’. That would be quite suitable for the contents, as ‘The Discourse of Court Interpreting’ followed by the subtitle ‘Discourse Practices of the Law, the Witness and the Interpreter’ is too general. The author deals with a very small part of the said discourse; this book is not about the whole linguistic practice of lawmaking and justice, as the author’s title may suggest. My second ‘why’
or, to use the author’s term, my hesitation
is about psycholinguistic and psychological issues discussed in the book. I suppose they deserve a separate volume on what people do in court to control the situation. The methodology of the monograph the way it is can be defined as eclectic, as it is a combination of Translation Studies methods and those of linguistics, culture, psycholinguistics and even psychology. These are all very different fields enjoying their own research topics, aims, tasks and methods. However, these comments are merely trifles. The book has impressed me as a substantial study of courtroom interpreting practices by a knowledgeable specialist. doi: 10.2167/pstb003.0

Vladimir Khairoulline Ufa, Russia

Proust’s English Daniel Karlin. London: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. 229. ISBN 0-19925688-4 (hbk): £27, US$45. ISBN 0-19-925689-1 (pbk): £15. Charming, erudite, ingenious, this focused examination of A la recherche du temps perdu can expect an appreciative, but highly limited, audience. What Karlin has done is look for echoes of English as exemplified by both the chic and chi-chi Anglomania in the Ile-de-France from 1870 to 1917. Only readers who already know the novel in its entirety well can savour the intricacies and imbrications of anglophile taste and expressions, usually in French disguise. After all, neither Proust nor his persona Marcel knew English. Indeed, when characters speak so that ‘Marcel’ will not understand them, they switch to English, and their dialogue goes unrecorded. ‘Marcel’ also continually mocks the semi-literate use of French by the continental staff at Balbec or among rural French getting acclimated to Paris slang. ‘Marcel’ makes a trip to Venice, but none of his travel fantasies involve London. Moreover, it is well documented that Proust’s translations of Ruskin relied heavily on his mother’s and Marie Nordlinger’s rough drafts. Nonetheless, Karlin, who tackles the ops stereoscopically, using the Moncrieff-Mayor-Enright translations for Random House vis-a`-vis the Tadie´ Ple´iade edition, shows that Proust’s characterisations and milieus for which his ear was unerring, made English a credible subtext that pierces the surface

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text with intrusions like ‘home’ and ‘fishing for compliments’. The entry of each Anglicism into French is fastidiously traced. Karlin’s delight in deconstructionist etymologising is a further demonstration that stereoscopic reading and deconstruction form a felicitous critical ploy. As for the semantic spaces between the French and the English, these appear in ingenious backtracking that makes English not only a source of ‘mots retrouve´s’, but also
despite vociferous calls for an uncontaminated French
a source for language enrichment. doi: 10.2167/pstb004.0

Marilyn Gaddis Rose State University of New York at Binghamton, USA

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If This Be Treason. Translation and its Dyscontents. A Memoir Gregory Rabassa. New York: New Directions, 2005. Pp. 192. ISBN 0-8112-1619-5 (cloth). US$21.95. If we hope to pick up tricks of the trade from ‘the best Latin American writer in the English language’, as Gabriel Garcı´a Ma´rquez complimented his translator, we will soon be rather dismayed at the translation strategies advocated by Gregory Rabassa. ‘Following the words of the original’ seems nowhere near as informative as ‘cultural transfer, amplification, compensation method, adaptation, etc.’; yet it is precisely this academic jargon that Rabassa wants to avoid
just as he steers clear of anything that smacks of the postmodern. Instead, he offers us a good old memoir which, paradoxically, recollects 30 authors he has translated so far, starting with Julio Corta´zar. Turning Rayuela into Hopscotch has turned Rabassa into a translator whose main motto is: ‘a good translation is a good reading’ (p. 49). As ‘every reader reads his or her own book’ (p. 74), it should come as no surprise that Rabassa does not care to comment on other people’s versions
‘we all read differently, except that a translator’s reading remains in unchanging print’ (p. 89). And how does Gregory Rabassa read? What do these recollections reveal? He seems to enjoy the complex narratives of magic realism or, if we are to believe him, these complicated stories seem to search him out. Jokingly, he explains that his WWII cryptographic practice at the Office of Strategic Services might have predisposed him to commit himself to such books. He translates as he reads, believing that this lends the English version the freshness of a first reading. Choosing good authors himself or following recommendations of his (former) students guarantees a successful translation: ‘the masters will enable you to render their prose into the best possible translation if you only let yourself be led by their expression, following the only possible way to go. If you ponder you will have lost the path’ (p. 17). This kind of apprenticeship will hopefully show the translator how to be a writer. The method of ‘learning by doing’ (p. 63) underpins this chrono logical presentation from the first translation of 1966 to the most recent of 2004 and a couple awaiting their publishers. Anecdotal, with frequent glances at the problems posed by translating titles, proper names or registers, the 30 accounts together with the introductory reflections on translation as treason and the final verdict: ‘not proven’ testify to Rabassa’s versatility, erudition and

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intuition, the desirable characteristics of ‘brilliant amateurs’ (p. 68). They also prove his humour, modesty and his unfailing respect for the authors he has followed word by word. doi: 10.2167/pstb005.0

Elz˙bieta Wo´jcik-Leese Jagiellonian University, Krako´w, Poland

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[Cultural Translation and the Interpretation of Literary Canons] Ning Wang. Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 2006. Pp. vii343. ISBN 7-101-05047-6: RMB 24. With an impressive publication record in both English and Chinese, Wang Ning is one of the few native Chinese who have broken the Sino
Anglo/ Western linguistic
cultural barrier and emerged in the international academic community as figures of considerable recognition. Now this status is all the more consolidated with this publication in Chinese (following his Englishlanguage volume Globalization and Cultural Translation from 2004). Dealing again with ‘cultural translation’, this Chinese volume is largely a collection of papers published before and translated or rewritten for the present purpose. A typical representative of the discourse on translation and culture in China, this book is no doubt a forward step over the traditional anthropological
linguistic sense of culture and translation typically represented by the overdue conventional addiction to Eugene Nida’s theory of translation (Bassnett, 1998: 129
132). Wang Ning’s book consists of a tripartite body and an appendix. Part 1 centres on the issue of cultural translation. Sequentially discussed here are six major issues, namely the translatology turn put forward as a way out for cultural studies now commonly recognised as trapped in a bottleneck of development (Ch. 1), the embedment of translation studies within cultural studies for a full display of the dialogic and coordinative function of translation in the context of globalisation (Ch. 2), the disciplinary status of translation studies as a science (Ch. 3), the proposal of different levels of correspondence or equivalence setting cultural translation as the ideal, though only partially possible in real practice (Ch. 4), the reconstruction of China’s critical discourse through theoretical translation (Ch. 5) and the role of diasporic writing (especially in English) in accelerating the globalisation of Chinese literature and culture (Ch. 6). Part 2 moves on to the recanonisation in translation as the interpretation of culture. Translation is here posed as a means to question and reconstruct the literary canons. Picking up the three ways out proposed for cultural studies in the first chapter of Part 1 (p. 12), Chapter 1 explores the canon formation in the cultural interpretation (i.e. translation) of literature on the basis of a case study of Northrop Frye’s The Great Code: The Bible and Literature. Using English as a reference point, Chapter 2 explores the role of the globalisation-driven worldwide spread of Chinese in the rewriting process of the history of Chinese literature and Chinese literatures. Chapter 3 elaborates on China’s (post)modernity as the result of translation and hybridisation that are mainly

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evidenced in Lin Shu’s translation practice. Chapter 4 is on the glocalisation strategy of cultural translation and its dual role of translation in its cultural colonisation and decolonisation. The last three chapters are case studies of, respectively, Walt Whitman’s crucial role in the formation of China’s modernity (Ch. 5), the foundational significance of M.H. Abrams’s The Mirror and the Lamp for the global spread of Romanticism as the earliest attempt of world literature at the ‘cultural globalisation’ (Ch. 6) and the first-time proposal to the international academic circles of the concept of open-ended, future-oriented and thus ever (un)translatable ‘Ibsenisation’ as a principle of postmodern aesthetics (Ch. 7). Part 3 puts emphasis on the overall review of cultural studies and the interpretation of cultural theories. Chapter 1 focuses on the latest development and the future prospect of cultural studies in the context of globalisation. Picking up again the three ways out proposed for cultural studies in the first chapter of Part 1 (p. 12), this chapter puts forward the strategy of conforming with the globalising trend and seeking from it chances to develop and spread Chinese culture worldwide (pp. 211
214). This decolonising or glocalising
that is, globalising in the reverse direction, or minoritising in Homi Bhabha’s words (p. 206)
strategy is carried into Chapter 2 (pp. 221
232, 235
236), which is on the cultural analysis of Chinese films in the context of globalisation. Besides the above film studies, other recent and most promising theoretical areas are outlined in the next two chapters, respectively gender and queer studies (both issuing from the turn from social status to gender uniqueness in feminism) in Ch. 3, and the picture theory and the turn from phono/ideographical to iconographical criticism in Ch. 4. In the last two chapters, the writer puts forward the strategy for the globalisation of China’s humanities and social sciences on the basis of the case studies of Mikhail Bakhtin and Jacques Derrida. Both theoreticians have had a great influence in Western academic circles. While Bakhtin’s case is used to illustrate Said’s notion of travelling theory and the importance of translation to the globalisation of China’s studies of Bakhtin, Derrida’s case study offers a summary of Derrida’s deconstructive theory and its methodological relevance for the studies of language, culture and translation. The Appendix consists of two dialogues offering a discursive summary of Wang Ning’s key viewpoints and an illustration of the dialogicity underlying all his theoretical undertakings. The first one is conducted between Douwe Fokkema and Wang Ning, revolving around four issues: the future prospect of the discipline of comparative literature, the studies of the influence of the Chinese literature and culture on Europe (a topic on which Qian Zhongshu is clearly a forerunner), the conflict between comparative literature and cultural studies, and the question of diaspora. There are (dis)agreements in each issue, and one cautional remark Fokkema makes twice in the discussion is the lack of a sound methodology in Wang Ning’s undertakings of the second and the fourth.1 The second dialogue, more like an interview of Wang Ning by Sheng Anfeng, is about Wang Ning’s stance on eight issues of concern in today’s academic circles in China, ranging from the disciplinary status of translatology and the function of translation for (de)colonisation to the influence of Chinese literature in Western countries and the relationship between literary theory

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and translation studies. Both dialogues provide a shortcut to Wang Ning’s viewpoints on many issues. Viewed as a whole, Wang Ning’s argumentation has several cornerstones, including the themes of globalisation and glocalisation, Edward Said’s notion of travelling theory and Homi Bhabha’s concept of cultural translation. It is indeed admirable to cohere all these into an organic whole. Its significance could only emerge through a closer look. Originally put forward by Homi Bhabha (p. 59), ‘cultural translation’ is a key concept used in the book and deserves a little explanation. In Wang Ning’s mind, unlike low-level linguistic rendition that seeks equivalence at word, sentence and paragraph level, cultural translation refers to the higher level of translation that seeks overall (con)textual equivalence allowing for a rearrangement of paragraphs or structure without interfering with the content or meaning of a text (p. 52). Translation in this sense is redefined as a revision (p. 61), i.e. a dynamic rendering of the spirit and style of the source text (pp. 35, 50
52). Its aim is to put on the move ideas and theories and cast them back into their wandering state (Said, 1983, 2000; quoted in this book on pp. 129
131, 198
199 and 278
279). Viewed in this way, this whole book is no doubt an instance of cultural translation at work. On the basis of the above conception, Wang Ning’s biggest contribution lies in his affinity with Bassnett and Lefevere in both his consistent selfacknowledgement as a scholar of comparative literature and his orientation of cultural studies to a translatological turn, a theoretically more rigorous thrust (p. 13) on the basis of Bassnett’s translational turn in the same field in 1998 and Bassnett and Lefevere’s cultural turn in translation studies in 1990.2 Corresponding to the many viewpoints in Polysystem theory, such as his argument for cultural studies being ‘anti-institutional and critical’ (p. 10) (like the marginality of translated literature in PS theory), Wang Ning’s second contribution lies in his approaching those issues from the present-day macro context of globalisation, another perspective that has an extremely high currency and relevance to every one of us. Threading through a major part of the book is the same argument moving from globalisation in the world to its consequential demand of the emphasis of Chinese
English translation in contemporary China’s academic circles (pp. 14
17, 26
29, 37
39, 58
75, 86
90, 110
121, 138
140, 148
153, 214, 279
281). This call for a shift of emphasis is Wang Ning’s greatest contribution, though still a little early for many Chinese scholars. It is its glocalising or decolonising function for the reconstruction of China’s critical discourse (pp. 58
75) or modern literature (pp. 66
71, 145
149) that defines Wang Ning’s pioneering role in this advocacy.3 It is easy to see that in the framework of Wang Ning’s argument, globalisation takes on the inverse sense of its usual version from the economic context where the international power play considerably favours the stronger countries, especially the English-speaking ones. Globalisation in that context means monopolisation, a replay of the old-time colonisation of the weaker by the stronger. But an economically powerful country is not necessarily a culturally strong one. That is why this favour, once relocated in the present context of literary and/or cultural studies, tends to dissolve and turn

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bidirectional. Here, the economically involuntary colonisation (either willingly or unwillingly received) tends to give place to double voluntarism: voluntary decolonisation from the self’s side and voluntary colonisation from the other’s side, as is readily evidenced in Wang Ning’s theoretical emphasis on translation out of the mother tongue in today’s China, that is, Chinese
English English translation. We might as well say that this double voluntarism is equally applicable to translation into the mother tongue in China as well as in the world, in which case what prevails is voluntary decolonisation from the other’s side and voluntary colonisation from the self’s side. That is where hybridisation comes into play, a new theme that is now fast colonising its own terrain in cultural and translation studies of today. In face of the ever-increasing spread of global chaos and confusion, we could see that it is this voluntarism that brings real hope to the possibility of a peaceful coexistence of different cultures, races, ethnic groups and nations. No translation, no humanity. This has always been the case throughout human history. And now pinned down specifically for the present world, hybridisation, as the core of translation, has to be voluntarily emphasised for every instance of translation in every situation. Of course, the equilibrium for hybridisation is difficult to find and maintain, but its direction or inclination (leaning toward one language or side in translation) has to be tailored to a specific local situation, spatially and temporally demarcated. Indeed the uniqueness of Wang Ning’s sense of globalisation lies exactly in its localisation in the Chinese context, where globalisation is for him both the means and the end, used interchangeably with and defined innovatively by decolonisation and glocalisation. It is this strong sense of locality in him that makes up yet another contribution to cultural and translation studies worldwide. doi: 10.2167/pst006b.0 Xiangjun Liu Fudan University and Shanghai University of Finance & Economics, China Notes 1.

2.

This immaturity is a deep-rooted problem of cultural studies and is duly admitted by many scholars in the field. Wang Ning, though readily admitting the flaw, tends to view it positively by partially crediting to it the prosperity of the whole field (pp. 23, 238, 271). This positive spirit is an important prop for his dialectic argument on globalisation, a source of not only challenges or conflicts but also opportunities for dialogues (pp. 20
22, 38
39, 65, 77
78, 110
121, 141, 148
153, 203
207, 211
214, 220
236, 270). It must be pointed out that, despite the affinity between Wang Ning’s translatological turn and Bassnett’s translational turn in the same field of cultural studies, we can find obvious difference between the two. While Wang Ning tends to
at least for the time being
include translation studies in cultural studies, viewing the former as a category under media studies, which in turn constitute a key part of the latter in the context of globalisation (pp. 22
23), Susan Bassnett is more inclined to call for a translational turn in cultural studies from the perspective of the ‘meeting’ (Bassnett, 2001: 132) of, or the ‘overlap’ (Bassnett, 2001: 136)/ ’cooperation’ (Bassnett, 2001: 138) between translation studies and cultural studies. In other words, what Bassnett looks at is the common ground between cultural and

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translation studies as two different and parallel fields. Yet this turn or common ground metamorphoses itself in Edwin Gentzler’s interpretation into a joint, a virtual merge of the two fields (Gentzler, 2001: xx). This ‘ambitious’ turn, whether or not originally intended by Bassnett, is clearly very different from Wang Ning’s turn. Wang Ning is not alone in this pursuit. Similar significant calls come from two other pioneers, Lu Gusun from Fudan University and Pan Wenguo from East China Normal University, though each approaches the issue from a different perspective. Viewed sociologically, Lu Gusun’s claim for the shift of emphasis is made mainly from the rationalist perspective, aiming directly at the huge mass of Chinese learners of English, while Pan Wenguo’s is mainly for the legitimacy of this exodoric thrust in the spread to the world of classical Chinese works. These three strains of thought deserve a parallel systematic study, which is however beyond the scope of the present book review.

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References Bassnett, S. (2001) The translation turn in cultural studies. In S. Bassnett and A. Lefevere (eds) Constructing Cultures: Essays on Literary Translation (pp. 123
140) (Reprinted from the edition of 1998 by Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd.). Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press. Gentzler, E. (2001) Foreword. In S. Bassnett and A. Lefevere (eds) Constructing Cultures: Essays on Literary Translation (pp. ix
xxii) (Reprinted from the edition of 1998 by Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd.). Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press. Wang, N. (2004) Globalization and Cultural Translation. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish International.