Translation History and Ethics
This area studies the history of translation and its theory, the social role and agency of translators, and the ethical questions raised by translating across languages and cultures.
Definition
The branch of translation studies concerned with the history of translation and translation theory and with the ethical and social dimensions of translating.
Scope
This area covers the historiography of translation and its ethics: the long history of thinking about translation from antiquity to the present; the postcolonial and feminist critiques that expose translation's entanglement with power; the ethics of the translator's choices and agency; and the impact of machine translation and technology on the profession. It draws on intellectual history, sociology, and ethics, treating translation as a culturally consequential act with a deep past and contested norms.
Sub-topics
Core questions
- How has thinking about translation changed over time?
- How is translation implicated in colonialism and gender politics?
- What ethical responsibilities does the translator bear?
- How are technology and machine translation reshaping the profession?
Key theories
- Ethics of difference
- Lawrence Venuti's argument that translation should resist the ethnocentric assimilation of foreign texts and instead register their difference, making the translator's choices an ethical stance toward the other.
- Translation as a culturally and politically situated act
- The view, advanced by Maria Tymoczko and others, that translators exercise agency and bear responsibility because translation participates in cultural representation, resistance, and the exercise of power.
History
Reflection on translation stretches from Cicero and Jerome through medieval translation movements such as those of Baghdad and Toledo to the Reformation Bible translations and the rise of the modern profession. The discipline's historical and ethical concerns sharpened with Berman's history of German Romantic translation, Venuti's ethics of difference, and postcolonial and feminist critiques in the 1990s.
Debates
- Fidelity, power, and the translator's responsibility
- Debates here concern to whom and to what the translator is responsible—source author, reader, commissioner, or wider justice—and how translation's role in colonial and gendered power should inform ethical practice.
Key figures
- Anthony Pym
- Lawrence Venuti
- Antoine Berman
- Maria Tymoczko
- Jean Delisle
Related topics
Seminal works
- bermanantoine1992
- venuti1998
- delisle2012
Frequently asked questions
- Why study the history of translation?
- Translation has shaped the transmission of religion, science, and literature across civilizations, so its history illuminates how cultures have influenced one another and how ideas about fidelity and freedom have evolved.
- What is translation ethics about?
- Translation ethics examines the translator's responsibilities and the moral implications of choices such as whose interests to serve and whether to assimilate or preserve cultural difference.