© Intercultural Studies Group Universitat Rovira i Virgili For a sociology of intercultural...

© Intercultural Studies GroupUniversitat Rovira i Virgili

For a sociology of intercultural irritation

Anthony Pym


The research EC Directorate General for Translation Addresses six main questions Survey of surveys 98 experts and informants 139 associations (103 in EU Member States) In-depth analysis of SFT survey Asymmetric information theory Theory of adverse selection


Angels?


Transaction costs over time


Degrees and training?

Translation is an “unprotected title” except in Slovakia. Employers recognize the IOL Diploma and Diplom-Überstetzer status. Most employers (including intergovernmental organizations) do their own testing.


Authorised/sworn translation?

Most countries have “authorized/sworn translator” as a protected title not delivered by an academic institution.

In five countries access to the title can be via an academic institution.

In seven countries, translations are certified by notaries or legal professionals, if at all.

Greece is in flux.


Authorized/sworn translation?


Cross-border recognition?

I have done a translation (FR>EN) of a diploma from a Belgium university and now the client asks for it to be sworn. I am English and live in England, client is Belgian living in Belgium (I guess), and I got the work via a Swedish agency. Needless to say I do not know the client.


Associations?

Many and varied: Certification (CIOL, ATA) Unionization / political representation Information / training Job agency Protection of degrees from particular

institutions (Greece, Cyprus, Estonia)


Associations?


Fragmentation of the market

1950s-1960s: Large prestigious associations1970s: Literary translators separate 1970s: Interpreters separate1970s-1980s: Separate associations for sworn and legal translators1980s: Separate associations for regional langauges1990s: Audiovisual translators separate2000s: Small interactive groups, incorporating job markets (decreasing signaling power)


Associations?

333,000 professional translators and interpreters in the world

(not 700,000)


Associations

Oversupply= weak signals


Employers? Employers expect translators to have a

university degree, although not necessarily in translation.

They give slightly more weight to experience.

They tend to run their own tests for new recruits.

The field of technical translation and localization shows relatively few signs of market disorder.


Press clippings 40 police in Malaga interrogated for corruption2 interpreters arrested, one of them accused of selling information


Press clippings 3 police interpreters sentenced for falsifying nationality of immigrants


Press clippings 2 sworn translators arrested for relations with money forgery operation


Press clippings Trial suspended because Chinese translator does not know Spanish


Press clippings Trial suspended because the only translator of Chinese was the accused


Recommendations Address paraprofessionals and “immigrant” languages. Address languages of export and negotiation. Ensure payment by the main beneficiaries. Seek cross-border recognition of qualifications and

certifications; Coordinate with certification systems operative in the

United States, Canada, Australia and China. Be wary of granting automatic professional certification

on the basis of academic degrees alone.


Modes of employment?

Approximately how many translators are part-time, in-house or freelance?

Part-time: about 60 percent (shared with teaching, interpreting, editing, writing)

Freelance: about 74 percent, with much variation

Women: 70 percent or above


Bourdieu- Habitus- (people learn) - Accumulation and conversion of capitals - (behaviorist psycho-sociology of the workplace) - Field - (A sterile debate)- The defense of society? - (Simeoni: Bourdieu and Toury on the state)


Bourdieu


Luhmann- Boundary maintenance systems (Talcott Parsons) - Systems as communication- Between systems, “irritation” – which makes the theory

unsuited to translation?


Luhmann- The concept of irritation […] refers to the form with which a

system is able to generate resonance to events in the environment, even though its own operations circulate only within the system itself and are not suitable for establishing contact with the environment (which would have to mean, of course, that they are functioning partly inside and partly outside).

- This concept of irritation explains the two-part nature of the concept of information. The one component is free to register a difference which marks itself as a deviation from what is already known. The second component describes the change that then follows in the structuring of the system, in other words the integration into what can be taken to be the condition of the system for further operations.

- (The Reality of the Mass Media 2000: 22)


Luhmann- Irritation is a part of all aesthetic experience: the play of

forms functions as an irritation (118); order “emerges from self-irritation” (147); one “takes delight in sheer irritation and provocation” (201); this refers back to the classical topos of θαυμαστόν or admiratio (265)

- Art as a Social System (2000: 352)


A sociology of translation? The question is not which sociologist to apply to

translation. It should be how translation, as a cross-border activity,

transfigures sociological models.

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