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“He stole our translation”: Translation reviews and the construction of Marxist discourse
Abstract
Despite the centrality of translations in introducing Marxist ideas, we know little about the agendas that shaped them. This paper investigates how reviews of translated Marxist theoretical texts, issued between 1927 and 1934 by the Communist Party of Greece, were utilised in a struggle to appropriate Marxist discourse from its rivals. Drawing on Foucault’s procedures of discourse control, and calling attention to power struggles among forces with counterhegemonic ideas, the paper analyses the party’s rules and conditions under which it was legitimate for a translator to carry out a translation and for the translation to enter political discourse. It will be argued that political tensions triggered changes in reviewing practices and efforts to renew translation quality criteria. These tensions shaped contemporary debates on the correct interpretation of Marxism and helped advance the party’s position (a) by calling on readers to disregard earlier translations issued by political rivals; (b) by constructing its own translations as truth-objects; and by fashioning itself as the gatekeeper of Marxism. Studying translation reviews allows us to extend our understanding of the complexities of discourse formation, to trace the history of discourses, to document how knowledge can be a resource in power struggles, and to understand how power struggles can recast discursive practices.
... However, as Gore (1993, 56) shows, Foucault's own references to local centres of power-knowledge allow us to perceive society at a more micro level "whereby discourses and practices can contain a local politics of truth. " This observation affords an expansion of the application of the concept to discourses of counter-hegemonic ideas, such as Marxism in Greece, and the acknowledgment that these contain their own constellation of power relations (Delistathi 2017). ...
... This method presupposes the integrity and sincerity of those involved in translation. This is important because, in the pre-war era, the KKE had accused its rivals on the Left of producing deliberately inaccurate translations with the explicit aim of falsifying Marxism (Delistathi 2017). Moreover, for the party, a single exact meaning of the source text exists objectively and translators should discover and formulate it, so the correct interpretation is established. ...
In 1951, the Communist Party of Greece published a Greek translation of the Selected Works of Marx and Engels which included a statement on the work practices followed for its creation. This article considers work practices as processes of validated knowledge production. It investigates how they were enacted to create the 'correct' translation of Marxist texts, and advances our understanding of the relationship between social structures, power, and processes of validated knowledge production. It argues that the party's col-laborative, centralised, and professionalised organisational model alongside mechanisms of surveillance and discipline of agents in translation supported its claims of owning the 'correct' interpretation of Marxism. The statement on the work practices was intended to influence the publication's reception: the reader was encouraged to accept the party's translation as accurate. Adopting a Foucauldian perspective, the investigation draws on party publications and archival material to study translation work practices in novel ways.
... Group interpreting is the sequential and simultaneous interpretation of one language into another among small groups. Being a group interpreter requires knowledge of the language and cultural specifics (Delistathi, 2017). ...
In the article, we researched the key indicators of Diageo Corporation,
aiming to identify the most risky trends. For the study the chosen time lag was
the trend of the last 10 years.
Diageo is a part of the beverage industry. Its business involves the supply
of alcoholic beverage under a collection of brands such as Johnnie Walker, Crown
Royal, Buchanan’s and Windsor whiskies, Smirnoff, Cîroc and Ketel One vodkas.
Diageo’s dividend grew at a compound annual rate of almost 6%, which is
far ahead of inflation and more than enough the most income investors to keep
happy.
Using methodological assessment, we assessed the profitability of the
company, for which we identified return on equity, economic profitability, and
net return on assets.
Taking into account the analysis conducted and the indicators recorded
during the assessment, we considered it essential to assess the company’s
bankruptcy risk. For this purpose, we used the bankruptcy risk assessment method
by R. Liss, which is widely used in international practice.
The assessment recorded as a result of the model implementation is
perceived as a safe financial situation for the company.
This paper investigates how collaborative translation practices were employed in the Greek translations of theoretical Marxist texts published by the Communist Party of Greece in the 1950s. The party’s efforts to dominate Marxist discourse required the codification of Marxist theory and the creation of accurate translations and retranslations of theoretical Marxist texts. To this end, a specific model of collaboration was developed based on the principles of industrial production, and conceptualised here as “industrialisation of translation” (Mossop 2006). The
translation process resembled a production line where, at different stages, each contributor added a part until the completion of a translation. The translation process is analysed by adapting indicators of industrialisation from Mossop (2006), e.g., large quantities of materials to be translated, centralization of translation, intensification of work, division of labor, and quality control and employee discipline, to show how collaboration was central both to the completion of translations and to claims about their accuracy.
In my research on translation in Fascist Italy (Rundle 1999; 2000; 2004; 2010; Rundle & Sturge 2010) I have been struck by one feature which I think is worth reflecting on and which, perhaps, goes counter to normal expectations concerning the role of translation and translators within a dictatorship, or totalitarian system. This is that the Fascist regime?s main concern was not the impact of individual texts that may have slipped through the censor?s net, or the potentially seditious effect of politically unreliable translators; rather it was concerned with the symbolic, and therefore political, value of translation as an overall phenomenon. In this paper I describe the two significant stages in the evolution of the regime that directly affected its perception of translation. Firstly, translation as a form of cultural exchange came into conflict with Fascist imperialist ambitions, calling into question the cultural hegemony of the regime and its ability to expand abroad. Secondly, with the introduction of racist legislation, translation came to be seen as a form of cultural miscegenation, a practice that, if allowed to continue uncontrolled, could threaten the cultural purity of the nation. In both these instances it is the symbolic, propaganda, value of translation that is the focus of the regime?s attention. They didn?t fear the translators or publishers, over whom they had quite sufficient control; they didn?t see translation as an act of opposition in itself, given that this form of cultural exchange could fairly easily be accommodated within fascist Fascist rhetoric of cultural renewal; instead, the regime reacted against the phenomenon when it could no longer avoid perceiving translation as a threatening sign of its own weakness, a sign of the failure of its cultural project. It was for this specific reason, I argue, that the regime intervened when it did, against translation.
This article analyzes the reception of Roberto Bolaño’s novels in Spanish and English from a comparative perspective, in the context of debates about the role of translation in a highly unequal global literary field. Departing from Casanova’s theorization of the ‘world republic of letters’ and tracing the main factors that have shaped the translation of Latin America into English, it focuses on Bolaño’s case through an analysis of newspaper reviews published in Spain, Britain and the US. Issues discussed include the periodization of the reception of Bolaño’s literature, the proliferation of divergent biographical narratives around Bolaño, and the degree of interconnection between the literary and journalistic fields at the transnational level. Bolaño’s case illustrates the importance of translation in the universal consecration of his work and the central role played by the US in this process. It also points to the US’s increasingly significant role in the global consecration of autonomous works and not just, as Casanova would claim, of commercial culture, and identifies some key limitations of theories that understand cultural globalization in terms of homogenization or Americanization.
The author wishes to thank Dr. Thomas Kemple, Dr. Dawn Currie, Dr. Renisa Mawani and Justin Page for their comments during the development of this paper as well as the anonymous reviewers for their comments. For over a century, social theorists have attempted to explain why those who lack economic power consent to hierarchies of social and political power. They have used ideology, hegemony and discourse as key concepts to explain the intersections between the social production of knowledge and the perpetuation of power relations. The Marxist concept of ideology describes how the dominant ideas within a given society reflect the interests of a rul-ing economic class. In this paper, I trace the movement from this concept of ideology to models of hegemony and discourse. I then trace a second set of ruptures in theories of ideology, hegemony and discourse. Marx and others link ideology to a vision of society dominated by economic class as a field of social power. However, theorists of gender and "race" have questioned the place of class as the locus of power. I conclude by arguing that key theorists of gender and "race"— Hall, Smith, hooks and Haraway — offer a more complex understanding of how our consent to networks of power is produced within contemporary capitalist societies. This argument has important implications for theory and practice directed at destabilizing our consent to power.
Notes on Contributors PART I: INTRODUCTION Translation and the History of Fascism C.Rundle & K.Sturge PART II: OVERVIEW ESSAYS Translation in Fascist Italy: 'The Invasion of Translations' C.Rundle 'Flight from the Programme of National Socialism'? Translation in Nazi Germany K.Sturge It was what it wasn't: Translation and Francoism J.Vandaele Translation in Portugal during the Estado Novo Regime T.Seruya PART III: CASE STUDIES Literary Exchange between Italy and Germany: German Literature in Italian Translation M.Rubino The Einaudi Publishing House and Fascist Policy on Translations F.Nottola French-German and German-French Poetry Anthologies 1943-45 F-R.Hausmann Safe Shakespeare: Performing Shakespeare During the Portuguese Fascist Dictatorship (1926-74) R.P.Coelho PART IV: RESPONSE The Boundaries of Dictatorship M.Philpotts Bibliography Index
We need to start looking at translational phenomena from an intensely self-reflexive and ethical-ideological viewpoint. We are caught in a (post-)neoliberal world order in which capitalist values become an ever more deeply engrained and unquestioned standard, an order of discourse the structures of domination and hegemony of which define global power relations, just as they permeate scholarly discourses. Promising research exists that questions the cultural hegemony of Anglophone value systems and their underlying positivist epistemologies. Important inroads have been made to uncover the intellectual roots of the epistemic threat which Anglophone discourse poses towards alternative forms of knowledge. These efforts question the epistemological and colonial roots of Anglophone supremacism, yet they do not venture into a more combative anti-neoliberal, in fact anti-imperialist, mode of reasoning. The missing piece in the jigsaw may be found in some strands of critical theory that question the socio-economic consequences of the Enlightenment in conjunction with a post-anarchist epistemology. In view of current geopolitical realities, this paper attempts to inject the notion of ‘hegemonic non-translation’ into the discourse of translation theory by stressing the significance of enhanced ‘self-reflexivity’ and a ‘critical economics’ for future research.
This article begins the exploration of some of the ways in which translation and interpreting may be embedded in a variety of projects that are set up outside the mainstream institutions of society, with agendas that explicitly challenge the dominant narratives of the time. More specifically, the essay outlines a narrative framework within which the work of communities of translators and interpreters who are actively involved in social or political agendas may be explained and critiqued. As I argue, narrative provides a basis for shared language and values, thus enabling the mobilization of numerous individuals with very different backgrounds and attributes around specific political, humanitarian, or social issues. Numerous amorphous groups of individuals of various backgrounds have long participated in translating and interpreting a range of narratives that challenge the dominant institutions of society. Examples of organizations that continue to draw heavily on the services of such committed translators and interpreters include Peace Brigades International (www.peacebrigades.org/), Front Line Defenders (www.frontlinedefenders.org), Habitat International Coalition (www.hic-net.org), and Gush Shalom, The Israeli Peace Bloc (www.gush-shalom.org/english/), among many others. In addition to these groups, a pattern of committed, strongly politicized communities is emerging within the world of professional translation and interpreting itself. I refer here to the part spontaneous, part planned conversions of professional translation and interpreting communities into political/activist groups. Examples include Translators for Peace (www.traduttoriperlapace.org/), Babels (www.babels.org/), Translators and Interpreters Peace Network (www.saltana.com.ar/pax/paxbabelica.htm), and ECOS (Traductores e Intérpretes por la Solidaridad; www.ecosfti.tk/). Inbetween the amorphous groups of professional and non-professional translators who service a broad range of humanitarian and activist organizations on the one hand and committed communities of professional translators and interpreters with a clear political agenda on the other, there is a vast range of different types of groupings and associations, including some with less clearly defined agendas. One such group is Translators Without Borders/Traducteurs Sans Frontières, an offshoot of Eurotexte, a commercial translation agency based in Paris. Promoted as a not-for-profit association set up to provide free translations for humanitarian organizations, especially for Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières), Translators Without Borders is nevertheless used by Eurotexte as a selling point for the agency, thus arguably commodifying the very idea of establishing political communities of action within the professional world of translation. I return to Translators Without Borders at the end of this essay, where I draw on Walter Fisher's narrative paradigm to assess the moral implications of its ambivalent position as a commercial-cum-activist community. I begin with an outline of the theoretical framework that informs my understanding of the emergence and practices of various activist groups in the field. These, I argue, are ultimately motivated not by any intrinsic attributes of the individuals who constitute each group but by a sense of identification with a "story" or set of "stories" around which the group gathers. They are, in other words, held together by their willingness to subscribe to the same, or a very similar, set of narratives. The account offered here acknowledges the power of narrative to instigate and maintain a sense of common identity and its potential as a basis for political action. Copyright © 2010 by University of Massachusetts Press All rights reserved.
This book traces the history of translation from the 17th century to the present day. It shows how fluency prevailed over other translation strategies to shape the canon of foreign literatures in English, and investigates the cultural consequences of the domestic values which were simultaneously inscribed and masked in foreign texts during this period. The book locates alternative translation theories and practices in British, American and European cultures which aim to communicate linguistic and cultural differences instead of removing them. It explains the way in which translation can be studied as a locus of difference and is suitable for students of translation at all levels.
In the 1960s, the Cuban Revolution sparked great interest in Latin America throughout the United States. Not coincidentally, the promotion and translation of literature from Latin America increased dramatically during this period. This essay explores the interplay of market and political forces in the promotion of Latin American literature in the United States through an examination of two programs funded by Rockefeller family philanthropies during the 1960s and 1970s: a translation subsidy program supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and administered by the Association of American University Presses; and the Translation Program of the Center for Inter-American Relations, which was funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. I trace both programs' efforts at working the U.S. market to promote works and authors. I also study the political motivations fostering these efforts, exploring the extent to which these programs both sought to promote cross-cultural understanding and tried to further U.S. foreign policy interests.
Foucault: A Very Short Introductions explores the highlights of Foucault's life and thoughts on literature, in particular the avant-garde scene; his philosophical and historical work; his treatment of knowledge and power in modern society; and his thoughts on sexuality. Foucault was one of those rare philosophers who became a cult figure. From aesthetics to the penal system, from madness and civilization to avant-garde literature, Foucault was happy to reject old models of thinking and replace them with versions that are still widely debated today. A major influence on Queer Theory and gender, he also wrote on architecture, history, law, medicine, literature, politics, and of course philosophy.
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