Translating Cultures.doc

Introduction: Translation

and Anthropology

Paula Rubel and Abraham Rosman

The central aim of the anthropological enterprise has always been to understand

and comprehend a culture or cultures other than one' own. This inevitably involves

either the translation of words, ideas and meanings from one culture to another, or

the translation to a set of analytical concepts. Translation is central to “writing

about culture”. However, curiously, the role that translation has played in anthro-

pology has not been systematically addressed by practitioners, even though

translation has been so central to data-gathering procedures, and to the search for

meanings and understandings, which is the goal of anthropology. One of the

reasons for this has been the ongoing internal dialogue about the nature of the

discipline. There are those who feel that anthropology is a social science, with the

emphasis on science, whose methodology, which usually involves analytical

concepts, sampling and quantification, must be spelled out in detail. On the other

side are those who emphasize the humanistic face of the field, and who feel that the

way to do fieldwork cannot be taught. Still others, who focus on achieving under-

standing of another culture, think it can only be achieved by “total immersion” and

empathy.

Since its inception as a discipline and even in the “prehistory” of anthropology,

translation has played a singularly important role. In its broadest sense, translation

means cross-cultural understanding. The European explorers and travelers to Asia

and later the New World were always being confronted with the problem of under-

standing the people whom they were encountering. Gesture and sign language,

used in the first instance, were soon replaced by lingua francas and pidgins, and

individuals who learned these lingua francas and pidgins became the translators

and interpreters. These pioneers in cross-cultural communication not only brought

back the words of the newly encountered people but also became the translators

and communicators of all kinds of information about these people, and the inter-

preters of their very differing ways of life, for European intellectuals, and the

European public at large. They were also the individuals who were the basis for the

conceptions which the Others had of Europeans.

With the development of anthropology as a formal academic discipline in

the mid-nineteenth century, and later as a social science, translation of course

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Publication Information: Book Title: Translating Cultures: Perspectives on Translation and Anthropology. Contributors: Paula G. Rubel - editor, Abraham Rosman - editor. Publisher: Berg. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 2003. Page Number: 1.

continued to play a significant role. At this point in time, anthropologists such as
Edward Tylor, Lewis Henry Morgan and Johann Bachofen remained in their
offices and libraries at home, while they theorized about the development of human
society and the evolution of culture. But their theories depended upon ethnographic
information collected by missionaries, travelers, traders and colonial government
officials. These were the individuals who were in first-hand contact with the
“primitive peoples”, who were very different from themselves. Their descriptions
of the ways of life of the people they were encountering were being published in
the various professional journals and monographs, which were established during
this period. At this point in time, the sources of this data were not questioned, nor
was there concern with, or any evaluation of this information in terms of how it
was collected, whether it was based on actual observations or casual conversations,
which languages were used, who was doing the translations and what were the
methods used. The degree of expertise of these Europeans in the local languages
or whether they used interpreters, and who these interpreters were, was also not
considered. Translation was the modus vivendi; however, the anthropologists of the
time were not concerned with questions of translation but only with the inform-
ation itself, and the ways in which it could be used to buttress the evolutionary
schemas and theories which they were hypothesizing.

Even when anthropologists themselves began to do fieldwork and gather ethno-
graphic data at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century,
field methodology and the role translation would play in the data-gathering
enterprise were not really addressed. Though Boas, the founding father of profes-
sional anthropology in the United States, emphasized the importance of linguistics
and the central role that language played in culture, he did not deal with the
question of translation. In the training of his students he emphasized the necessity
of learning the native language. The students were to collect information about the
various aspects of a culture by recording texts in the native language. He himself
published the results of his research with the Kwakiutl in the form of texts as, for
example, in the two-volume Ethnology of the Kwakiutl, with the Kwakiutl version
of the text transcribed in phonetics on the bottom half of the page and the English
translation on the top half. There was a brief note about transcription at the begin-
ning of the work entitled Explanation of Alphabet Used in Rendering Indian
Sounds (Boas 1921: 47). He sent his Columbia University students to various
American Indian tribes, whose languages were in danger of disappearing because
of the shift to the use of English. This was to record valuable linguistic information
about these languages, using phonetic transcription, before knowledge of them was
lost. Though he did not deal with translation in general, Boas recognized that the
languages of the New World were organized in a totally different manner than
European languages and Latin. Such differences in grammatical categories are
central to problems of translation. The fact that grammatically, a speaker of the

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Kwakiutl language indicates how he knows about an action a particular individual
is performing, whether he saw the action himself, or heard about it from someone
else, while the speaker of English does not, surely plays a role in the translation of
Kwakiutl to English or English to Kwakiutl.

Malinowski, in his Introduction to Argonauts of the Western Pacific, was the first
anthropologist to systematically address the topic of the procedures which one
should use to conduct fieldwork. Acquiring the local language was essential since
it was to be used as the “instrument of inquiry”. Malinowski noted the necessity
of drawing a line between, “… on the one hand, the results of direct observation
and of native statements and interpretations, and on the other hand the insights
of the author…” (1961 [1922]: 3). He noted that “pidgin English” was a very
imperfect instrument for gaining information. He recognized the importance of
acquiring a knowledge of the native language to use it as an instrument of inquiry.
He talked about the way in which he himself shifted from taking notes in trans-
lation which, as he noted, “… robbed the text of all its significant characteristics
– rubbed off all its points … at last I found myself writing exclusively in that
language [Kiriwinian], rapidly taking note, word for word of each statement”
(Malinowski 1961 [1922]: 23–4). By and large, though, anthropologists trained
during the period of the ascendancy of British social anthropology and the func-
tionalist paradigm–such as Radcliffe-Brown, Evans-Pritchard, Fortes, Leach,
Shapera, et al.–always considered it important to learn the language or languages
being used in the areas in which they worked. They did long periods of intensive
fieldwork during which translation was constantly involved, but they did not
formally consider translation' impact on their work or their theorizing. They
recognized that it was important to use the languages spoken locally and not
pidgins, lingua francas, interpreters or the languages in use by the hegemonic
colonial governments, in order to understand the nature of the local culture and
its meanings. More recently, the authors of Ethnographic Research: A Guide to
General Conduct, a text devoted to an explication of research methods written for
British social anthropologists, note that fieldwork “… requires some systematic
understanding of it [the local language] and an accurate transcription. In the
absence of a local writing system (which, in any case would have to be learned)
one must make one' own phonemic one, using a recognized system like the
International Phonetic Alphabet” (Tonkin in Ellen 1984: 181). In addition, learn-
ing the lingua franca of the wider area, be it a pidgin or Creole, is also deemed
essential.

During the postwar period in America and Britain–despite the turn in interest
toward symbolic and later interpretive anthropology with its primary focus on
cultural understandings–translation, such a central part of the search for meaning,
was never a subject of discussion and seems to have been of minimal importance.
The same point can be made with respect to structuralism. Cultural meanings and

understandings were significant for the structuralist enterprise, which was also
important in the postwar era, since the data being analyzed were the products of
translation, yet translation issues were never directly confronted by structuralists.
Postmodernism has been the subject of continuing debate and controversy among
American cultural anthropologists. James Clifford and other postmodernists have
forced us to reconsider the anthropological enterprise, from fieldwork and data
gathering to the production of the ethnographic text. Since cultural understanding
is based on the premise that translation is possible, translation and all its aspects
should be a primary focus in this discussion, but this has not been the case. Clifford
in a recent work finally confronts the issue of translation. He supports the idea
embodied in the crucial term traduttore tradittore, that is “The translator is a
traitor”. He notes further that one should have an appreciation of the reality of what
is missed and what is distorted in the very act of understanding, appreciating and
describing another culture (Clifford 1997).

In the United States, cultural anthropology is still going through a period of
assessment and the rethinking of its goals, procedures and raison dêtre. Thus, this
is an excellent time to consider a series of issues arising from the fact that for
anthropology, translation is and must be a central concern. Is translation from one
culture to another possible and if so under what conditions? Can an anthro-
pological researcher control another language adequately enough to carry out a
translation? How should a researcher deal with the presence of class dialects,
multilingualism and special-outsider language use? What constitutes an acceptable
translation, one which contains more of the original or source language or one
which focuses on the target language and the reader' understanding? What is the
relationship between translation and the conceptual framework of anthropology?

At the outset we should explore where translation fits in terms of what anthro-
pologists do during fieldwork, the analysis of the data and the writing of the
ethnographic text. Anthropologists, going to do fieldwork in a culture foreign to
their own, usually try to ascertain which language or languages are spoken in the
area of their interest and to begin to learn these before they leave their home base
or immediately upon arriving at the field site. Field assistants or interpreters may
need to be used at first, and it is their translations upon which the anthropologist
relies. Data that the fieldworker records, what people recount to him or her, words
associated with rituals or conversations and observations may initially be written
in the native language to be translated into their own language–English, German,
etc.–soon after or in a procedure which combines both, which Malinowski used,
as his field notes reveal. The phonetic recording of the material in the native
language is essential, but often this is not the procedure used.

We might call this translation in the first instance. How does one approximate
as closely as possible the original words and ideas of the culture being studied in
the translation? Glossing and contextualizing is one of the methods used, which we

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will discuss later in greater detail. Clifford has made us very aware of the con-
structed nature of the ethnographic text and the various messages such texts
convey. The ethnographic texts, which anthropologists publish today, never consist
of the data exactly as collected in the field. Only Boas frequently did publish texts
in the same form as they were received from his primary field assistant, George
Hunt. Taking the postmodern message of subjectivity to heart, some postmodernist
anthropologists publish their ethnographic material in very self-reflexive accounts,
which describe what happened to them in the field, and the understandings of the
other society which they themselves gained. They usually do not deal with the
question of translation. This emphasizes the humanistic, hermeneutic focus on how
the self constructs understandings of the Other. Other anthropologists, after doing
their translations from the source language, chose to examine their data in terms of
reoccurring patterns of behavior and ideas and present their understandings of the
culture in a series of generalizations. At this level, the translation is in terms of the
analytical concepts developed in anthropology, which permit the possibility of
considering cross-cultural similarities if such are relevant. The question of the fit
between the cultural understandings of one group and the level of analytical
constructs is a very important issue. The development of analytical concepts in
anthropology was based upon the premise of cross-cultural similarities at a higher
analytical level than the generalizations formed about a single culture. At this level
of generalization, some of the individuality and specificity of cultural phenomena
which translation has revealed “falls by the wayside”. This last step is one which
some younger American anthropologists today do not wish to take, precisely
because they feel that analytical concepts do not cognitively resonate sufficiently
with the meanings of the particular culture they have studied. More importantly,
some see these analytical concepts as emanating from the hegemonic West to be
imposed upon the Third World Others compromising the specificity of their
cultural concepts.

Though translation in anthropology clearly involves a more complex procedure
than literary translation, Translation Studies, which has recently emerged in the
United States as a distinct discipline dealing not only with the historical and
cultural context of translation, but also with the problems associated with trans-
lating texts, may offer some assistance to anthropologists confronting similar
problems in their own work. The work of translation specialists has revealed that
at different historic periods in the Western world, there were different translation
paradigms. These varied in terms of the degree to which translations were oriented
toward the target language or to the source language. What kind of connection
should there be between the original text and the translation? Is the role of the
translator, as it is imprinted on the translation, parallel to the role of the anthro-
pologist as the interpreter of a culture not his own (though some anthropologists
today study their own cultures).

Translation theory rests on two different assumptions about language use. The
instrumental concept of language, which sees it as a mode of communication of
objective information, expressive of thought and meanings where meanings refer
to an empirical reality or encompass a pragmatic situation. The hermeneutic
concept of language emphasizes interpretation, consisting of thought and mean-
ings, where the latter shape reality and the interpretation of creative values is
privileged (Venuti 2000: 5).

Competing models of translation have also developed. There are those who see
translation as a natural act, being the basis for the intercultural communication
which has always characterized human existence. This approach emphasizes the
commonality and universality of human experience and the similarities in what
appear, at first, to be disparate languages and cultures. In contrast, there is the view
that translation, seen as the uprooting and transplanting of the fragile meanings of
the source language, is unnatural. Translating is seen as a “traitorous act”. Cultural
differences are emphasized and translation is seen as coming to terms with “Other-
ness” by “resistive” or “foreignizing” translations which emphasize the difference
and the foreignness of the text. The foreignized translation is one that engages
“… readers in domestic terms that have been defamiliarized to some extent”
(Venuti 1998: 5) These models clearly reveal the ideological implications of
translation, one of the features which translation-studies specialists have strongly
emphasized. As Basnett notes, “All rewritings, whatever their intention reflect a
certain ideology and a poetics and as such manipulate literature to function in a
society in a given way. Rewriting is manipulation, undertaken in the service of
power and in its positive aspect can help in the evolution of a literature and a
society” (Basnett in Venuti 1995: vii). Hierarchy, hegemony and cultural dom-
inance are often said to be reflected in translations, especially those which were
done during the colonial period. These features are also said to be present in
translations, which are being done now in the postcolonial period. The translation
of foreign texts may also reflect the ideological and political agendas of the target
culture. As Cronin notes, “Translation relationships between minority and majority
languages are rarely divorced from issues of power and identity, that in turn
destabilize universalist theoretical prescriptions on the translation process” (Cronin
1996: 4). The values of the culture of the source language may be different from
those of the target language and this difference must be dealt with in any kind of
translation. It is clear that the translations done by anthropologists cannot help but
have ideological implications. How does one preserve the cultural values of the
source language in the translation into the target language, which is usually the aim
of the translation. The values of the local culture are a central aspect of most of the
cultural phenomena which anthropologists try to describe, and these may differ
from and be in conflict with the values of the target culture. How to make that
difference comprehensible to audiences is the major question at issue.

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What constitutes “fidelity” to the original text? Walter Benjamin, in his famous
essay entitled “The Task of the Translator”, notes that “The task of the translator
consists of finding that intended effect [intention] into which he is translating,
which produces in it the echo of the original” (Benjamin 1923 in Venuti 2000). To
him, a translation constituted the continued life of the original. Benjamin is seen
by translation specialists as espousing what is referred to as “foreignizing trans-
lation”. Benjamin sees the basic error of the translator as preserving the state
“… in which his own language happens to be, instead of allowing his language to
be powerfully affected by the foreign tongue. He must expand and deepen his
language by means of the foreign language. It is not generally realized to what
extent this is possible, to what extent any...