The translator’s sociological biography and life telos: the case of John Minford

ABSTRACT

The ‘human turn’ in Translation Studies has recently drawn attention to the translator’s personal motivation, or ‘telos.’ However, this concept is largely underdeveloped due to a lack of proper conceptual and methodological frameworks. This study aims to propose a theoretical model for constructing the translator’s life teloi based on the structural analysis of their sociological biography. This approach, which draws upon Bernard Lahire’s sociology at the level of the individual and borrows conceptual tools such as ‘biographical ruptures’ and ‘existential problems’, is used to examine the life teloi of the Chinese-English literary translator John Minford. Minford’s sociological biography is reconstructed and then broken down to highlight his sociological ruptures and existential problems. The structural analysis of Minford’s biography indicates that he has a life telos of ‘translation as utopia’, which was forged before his entry into a translation career and had considerable influences on his translation activities. This suggests that there may be complex links between a translator’s life and practice. As such, it seems promising to investigate the translator’s personal history and explore the genesis of their motivations for engaging in translation, their selection of source texts, their preferences among translation norms, and their unique translation choices.

KEYWORDS:

• Sociological biography
• life telos
• John Minford
• translator studies
• biographical ruptures
• existential problems

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Professor Reine Meylaerts and Dr Jack Mc Martin (KU Leuven, Belgium) for their inspiring input on an earlier draft of this paper. The editors of Perspectives and two anonymous reviewers are also kindly acknowledged for their insightful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Social Science Fund of China: [Grant Number 20&ZD330].

Notes on contributors

Lin Chen

Lin Chen is an Assistant Professor at the School of Foreign Languages, Southwest Jiaotong University in Chengdu, China. He has published works in both Chinese and International journals, such as Chinese Translator Journal, Perspectives, and Target. His main research area is literary translator studies, with a focus on the English translation of Chinese fictions and classics, as well as broader topics in translation theory and translation history.