THINKING ABOUT TRANSLATION STUDIES IN AFRICA

We were privileged to host Prof Maria Tymoczko from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, during the week of 18 to 22 July. She read two papers and held two workshops during this week.

In her first paper, she provided a theoretical underpinning for agency in translation studies. Based on the American philosopher Quine, she argued that the inherent indeterminacy in language forces any interpreters of language to make choices concerning their interpretation. This very choice is the reason behind the agency of a translator. A source text cannot be read without making such choices, and because choices involve value judgements, translation entails agency. Tymoczko thus use the indeterminacy of language as the basis for a theory of translator agency.

In the first workshop, she discussed some trajectories for research in translation studies, comparing what happened over the past 10 years with what she expect to happen during the next 10 years. She also led a brainstorming session in which participants came up with research topics that are relevant to the South African context. Here, the translation history of apartheid was highlighted as a gap in current research in South Africa.

The third event also entailed a workshop in which Tymoczko and Kobus Marais shared their views on the future of postcolonial studies. Tymoczko asked whether the effects of the colony should be the only point of interest for postcolonial studies and whether the ills created by the postcolony itself should not also find a place in postcolonial studies. Marais suggested that translation studies suffer from three biases which constrains the field in the Global South, namely the formal economy, high culture and language.

In her last paper, Tymoczko highlighted some of the findings from neuroscience that might have some impact on translation. Among the many questions that she raised is the question pertaining to the influence of a multilingual childhood on translator competence. How can translators, who did not have a multilingual childhood, be educated to achieve the same broadness of conceptualization as multilingual children?