Thursday, 14 April 2016

Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and Applications,
Jeremy Munday, Routledge, 2016
Chapter 8, "Cultural and ideological turns" (pp. 197-221), page 203

Jeremy Munday, in the fourth edition of "Introducing Translation Studies", is considering cultural translation. By this, sadly, he doesn't mean translating a culture, but translations that cross a cultural boundary or have cultural issues involved in the translation process.

He turns to the issues of poetics, ideology and translation, referencing the work of André Lefevere. Lefevere claims:

On every level of the translation process, it can be shown that, if linguistic considerations enter into conflict with considerations of an ideological and/or poetical nature, the latter tend to win. ("Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame", Routledge, 1992)

So there is a conflict, a contest, between the linguistic principles of the translator and his ideological principles. Lefevere thinks ideology will be on top. Munday comments:

For Lefevere, therefore, the most important consideration is the ideological one. In this case, it refers to the translator's ideology or the ideology imposed upon the translator by patronage. The poetical consideration refers to the dominant poetics in the target language culture. Together, ideology and poetics dictate the translation strategy and the solution to specific problems.

My question is: do Jewish believers in Yeshua get a fair hearing and translation? When there is a conflict between a literal translation of a JBY life/faith/understanding, which might counter the ideology of the church - who does the translation and is it an honest translation?