Translation at the cross-roads: Time for the transcreational turn?

ABSTRACT

This paper focusses on the real problems involved in promoting the translator's role and status to that of intercultural mediator. Ever since the cultural turn in the 1980s, academics have been equating translation with intercultural mediation (IM) and translators as mediators. The paper first looks at how mediation has been understood in translation, and then investigates a number of issues regarding intervention, both at a theoretical and at a practical level.

In theory, as a result of the cultural turn, there should be a more context-based understanding of communication, and hence a more intervenient role for the translator. At a practical level, however, normative roles follow a conduit theory of translation based on language transfer.

While academia and the profession wrangle over IM, a number of other options are emerging to cater for the ever-increasing real need for translation and IM. This competition is potentially marginalizing translators and interpreters. It will be suggested that ‘transcreation’ may be a way forward, though optimism is tempered with the profession's own beliefs regarding intervention and towards change.

KEYWORDS:

• Translation theory
• professional translation
• context
• cultural mediation
• Interpreting Studies
• transcreation

Notes on contributors

David Katan taught at the Interpreters’ School in Trieste for 20 years before taking the position as Professor of Translation at the University of Salento (Lecce). He has published over 60 articles on translation and intercultural communication, including contributions to the Routledge encyclopaedia of translation studies, the Benjamins handbook of translation studies, and the Wiley-Blackwell encyclopaedia of applied linguistics. His book, Translating cultures: An introduction for translators, interpreters and mediators, is now in its second edition. He is senior editor of Cultus: The Journal of Intercultural Mediation and Communication. Apart from intercultural communication, his research has more recently focussed on the status of the translator. He is currently conducting a second global survey of the profession, which, like the first survey, is expected to have over 1000 responses.

ORCID

David Katan http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7990-8841

Notes

1. The French business magazine Capital has a larger circulation than the British The Economist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_magazines_by_circulation)