27.1166, Review: Socioling; Translation: Sturge, Wolf (2015)

Fri Mar 4 19:26:38 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-1166. Fri Mar 04 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.1166, Review: Socioling; Translation: Sturge, Wolf (2015)

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Date: Fri, 04 Mar 2016 14:26:13
From: Lelija Socanac [lelijasocanac at gmail.com]
Subject: The Habsburg Monarchy's Many-Languaged Soul

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-2775.html

AUTHOR: Michaela  Wolf
TRANSLATOR: Kate  Sturge
TITLE: The Habsburg Monarchy's Many-Languaged Soul
SUBTITLE: Translating and interpreting, 1848–1918
SERIES TITLE: Benjamins Translation Library 116
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Lelija Socanac, University of Zagreb

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

The book “The Habsburg Monarchy Many-Languaged Soul” by Michaela Wolf consists
of a  List of figures, a List of tables,  an Introduction, 9 chapters, a
Conclusion, References, an Appendix: List of Italian-German translations
1848-1918, a Name Index and a Subject Index.

The Introduction gives a brief overview of the methodology applied in the
research on translating and interpreting in the Habsburg Monarchy and its main
results.  In terms of methodology, the book exemplifies the “cultural turn” in
translation studies, which gives a voice to translators and interpreters and
contributes to the sociology of translation, a field that focuses on the
implications of translation and interpreting as social practices and
symbolically mediated interactions. 

The pluricultural space of the Habsburg Monarchy offers fertile ground to
apply this approach. The period between 1848 and 1918 was chosen as the one
when the various nationalities within the Monarchy faced intense competition
and interdependency, which  put the existing orders of communication to the
test and accelerated the process of constructing images of the self and the
other. 

The book proceeds in two analytical steps. In the first, the author
investigates the factors relevant to the cultural constructions generated by
translation in the widest sense within the communicative space of the Habsburg
Monarchy and proposes a typology of translations. The aim of the second
analytical step is to develop a methodology that can relate the individual
processes of construction to particular agents participating in them, applying
Bourdieu’s sociology of culture. 

The translation corpus includes texts that were published in the Habsburg
Monarchy between 1848 and 1918. The macro level involves a quantitative
analysis of 16 translation bibliographies which provide the framework for a
detailed analysis of translations from Italian into German; these are
investigated along parameters including genre, place of publication, type of
publication, and the gender of authors and translators. 

The book’s larger aim is to bring broad-based models of translation to the
challenges posed by pluriethnic communities such as the European Union, going
beyond the image of translation and interpreting as merely service activities.
According to the author, the Habsburg Monarchy may be a kind of experimental
laboratory for the European Union from the point of view of language policy,
the status accorded to different languages, and the effective handling of
complex multilingual situations.

Chapter 1: “Locating translation sociologically” discusses scholarship and
society in the context of translation.  Translation studies “going social” are
analysed in an effort to provide an adequate basis for a sociologically
oriented theoretical model capable of capturing the social contingencies that
drive the processes of production, distribution and reception constituting the
texture of the ”field of translation” or of the translational “space of
mediation”. 

Chapter 2:”Kakania goes postcolonial” the author uses the name “Kakania,”
coined by Robert Musil to refer to the Habsburg Monarchy, playing on the
initials “k.k.” (“kaiserlich und koniglich”, i.e. the Imperial and Royal
Monarchy) . Different ways of locating “Habsburg culture” in the light of
postcolonial theories are discussed. Although postcolonial studies have
undermined dominant, ethnocentrically coded models, their emancipatory
potential for translation has not yet been fully explored.  The author
believes that translation studies can benefit from post-colonial studies to
work out a heterogeneity-oriented concept of difference as a way of explaining
the emergence of cultural identities. In the context of debates on cultural
overlap and “centre” vs “periphery”, the concept of “translational culture” is
proposed (Bhabha 1994, 212) as a new point of departure for cultural
encounters, making cultural boundaries the site of new cultural production. It
is suggested that in addition to the “original” texts, the dynamics of
mediation or translation plays a crucial role in constructing cultures.
Moreover, the author discusses the “cultural turn” in the humanities and its
consequences, translation as a contribution to the construction of cultures,
and the concept of “cultural translation”, providing a tentative typology of
translations.  

Chapter 3: “The Habsburg Babylon” presents the multiculturalism debate,
language statistics, language policy and the polylingual book market in the
Habsburg Monarchy. After examining key aspects of the “nationalities
conflicts” that began to arise in the second half of the 19th century and
their implications for everyday language use, the author traces how census
surveys of “languages of common communication” and the language policy
measures in language-related ordinances impacted on the language and
translation in the long term. The linguistic diversity was regulated by a
complex body of central and provincial laws. The major points of this
legislation map out the landscape within which translation took place, showing
how closely the “language question” in the multi-ethnic state was associated
with translation activity. The chapter closes with a study of trends on the
book market in the Habsburg Monarchy throughout the period under
consideration. 

In Chapter 4: “Translation practices in the Habsburg Monarchy’s ‘great
laboratory’” the author provides a typology of translation practices,
distinguishing between different forms of polycultural  communication and
polycultural translation.

The category of “polycultural communication” includes bilingualism or
multilingualism as constitutive elements of the Habsburg communicative space,
because of which the speakers of various languages within the Monarchy
habitually switched their linguistic variety and their cultural context in
order to communicate on a daily basis.  Habitualized translation refers to the
domains where everyday communication relied on bilingualism and
multilingualism and did not generally require a special “mediator” – primarily
in the working lives of servants, craftspeople, and “exchange children”
(Tauschkinder).  Institutionalized translation was carried out as part of the
differentiated legal regulation of linguistic diversity, primarily in the
domains of education, the army, and the civil service, where the requirements
of the multi-ethnic state were addressed in an institutionalized form.
Switching between various languages was a daily routine for both teachers and
students in utraquist schools. The army was also the “great school of
multilingualism” since the overwhelming majority of the army units were
multilingual. The administration was the Monarchy’s “hall of languages” and
the selection process for appointing civil servants was often based on
competitions including language tests and compulsory language examinations for
civil servants already employed in government departments. 

 “Polycultural translation” included all the forms of translation between the
Monarchy’s languages that required an explicit act of mediation; these
included contact between government offices and the public, interpreting and
translating in court, translating legislative texts, the work of the
Terminology Commission and the Reichsgesetzblatt Editorial Office, and
translation in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with its Section for Ciphers
and Translating and the Literary Bureau,  as well as the Ministry of War with
its Evidence Bureau. 

An account of the training of dragomans, or “language lads” who were sent to
Istanbul to learn Turkish, Persian and Arabic, is also provided. In 1754, the
Oriental Academy was founded, designed to prepare candidates for work as
dragomans in the Ottoman Empire. Seven languages on average were taught, in
addition to instruction in law, economics and commerce. By the end of the 19th
century, the Academy was taking on the role of the consular service’s main
preparatory institution. 

The chapter ends with a discussion of the contribution of translation
practices to the construction of cultures, arguing that the identity
constructions necessary to the discursive construction of a multi-ethnic state
proceeded mainly via translation, in which direct cultural encounters meant a
continuous recontextualization of the “other”. The features characteristic of
translation and interpreting in the Habsburg Monarchy reflect both the
complexity of the pluricultural communicative space and its potential for
conflict. The tensions arose from the nationalities conflict, the centrality
of plurilingualism, the unsystematic training of translators, and the
mediating role of institutions.

Chapter 5: “Theoretical sketch of a Habsburg translational space” discusses
the need for a sociological model that can reveal the social implications of
translatorial action in all its multifarious forms.  The basic tenets of
Bourdieu’s sociology of culture are discussed, focusing on the concept of the
social field (Bourdieu 1993), cultural, social and symbolic capital (Bourdieu
1998) and the concept of habitus (Bourdieu 1990). In laying the foundations of
a translation sociology, the author attempts to discover the social
implications of translation and anchor them in a complex model of translation
as moulded by ideological, political and economic factors.

Chapter 6: “‘Promptly, any time of day’: The private translation sector”
discusses commercial translation and its institutionalization, as well as
struggles for positions in the commercial translation sector. The emergence of
a distinct, autonomous private translation sector was partly due to the reform
of trade regulations which liberalized the establishment of commercial
companies. In the wake of this liberalization process translation bureaus
began to emerge.

Chapter 7 “‘Profiting the life of the mind’: Translation policy in the
Habsburg Monarchy” defines “translation policy” as a regulated action by the
state or its institutions, with the aim of guiding the cultural practice of
translation into particular channels. Among the factors regulating cultural
policy, the author examines the controlling role of censorship and the
publishing legislation, including copyright and bookseller licensing, that
continued to shape literary production after censorship was abolished. The
author also discusses the state promotion of culture and literature in the
form of literary prizes.

Chapter 8: “The Habsburg ‘translating factory’: translation statistics”
provides the bibliographical data on polycultural and transcultural
translation between 1848 and 1918 based on the translation bibliographies.
Translation statistics are also provided, obtained by examining the
bibliographies of translations from 15 languages into German. 

Chapter 9: “The mediatory space of Italian-German translations” discusses
Austrian-Italian perceptions, translations from Italian in the German-speaking
area, transformations of the field of translation, paratexts, and the Habsburg
space of mediation. Intellectual exchanges between the German-speaking and
Italian-speaking areas rested on long-standing cultural contacts. Tense
political relations between the Germanocentric central government and the
Monarchy’s Italian-speaking regions, and between Austria and the newly
established state of Italy, had an increasing impact on reciprocal literary
perceptions. 

The author also focuses on the role of paratexts (Genette 1997, 2),  taking
into consideration both authorial and allographic paratexts: the naming of the
translation and translator dedications, prefaces and afterwords, epigraphs,
commentaries and annotations, publishers’ advertisements and reviews.
Reception in the Habsburg communication network covers varied factors such as
the book market, the reading public, various types of publication,
consecration mechanisms (reviews, prizes, etc.) and many more. 

The author’s reconstruction of the Habsburg translational space of mediation
rests on her argument that Bourdieusian field theory is unable to fully
capture the process of mediation. Therefore, the figure of the third space is
added to Bourdieu’s model  which is capable of accounting not only for the
temporary nature of the space of mediation, but also for the positioning of
the principal agents and their actions in a “space between”. The analysis of
paratexts generated in the Monarchy’s translational space of mediation offers
insights into the translatorial habitus of the period. 

The author’s account of translation’s constructive character arises from a
concept of culture that takes account of the multifarious processes of meaning
constitution and recontextualization generated by cultural encounters. In the
Habsburg context, culture was produced by members of a community who crossed
geographical, ethnic, linguistic, political and national boundaries. In the
Monarchy, processes of construction were at work on two levels: on a macro
level it was mainly conditioned by migration, and on a micro level translation
accommodated a heterogeneous cultural lifeworld while also contributing to its
construction. The author proposes a view of translation as something
reciprocal, dialogical, polyphonic and interactional that plays a part in
constructing the receiving culture and is able to find receptive contexts that
permit mutability, renewal and transformation. In this sense Habsburg culture
may be understood as the outcome of processes of translation.

EVALUATION

The book is an important contribution to the research on translation,
multilingualism and language policies in the Habsburg Monarchy, with a very
detailed overview of the role of different types of translation and
interpreting, both habitualized and institutionalized, in creating
multicultural spaces of the Monarchy. 

In addition, it places translation within the wide theoretical framework
characterized by the “cultural turn” in translation studies. Applying the
concept of cultural translation and working with sociological tools, the book
successfully addresses the mechanisms by which translation and interpreting
construct culture, and outlines a model of the Habsburg Monarchy’s
“pluricultural space of communication” that is applicable to other
multilingual settings.

What I find especially valuable is the very detailed and thorough research
into translation practices in the Habsburg Monarchy in the period under
consideration, revealing numerous less known or completely new aspects of the
Monarchy’s multilingual policies and practice. 

The book will be of interest to anyone interested in multilingualism, language
policies, historical sociolinguistics and translation studies and it opens new
directions of research into the role of translation in multilingual settings,
offering possibilities of comparison between the Habsburg Monarchy and the
European Union.

REFERENCES

Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge.

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Trans. Richard Nice. Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press. 

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1993. The Field of Cultural Production, or: The Economic
World Reversed”. Trans. Richard Nice. In Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of
Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, ed. Randal Johnson, 29-73.
Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1998. Practical Reasons: On the Theory of Action. Trans.
Gisele Sapiro et al.. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Csáky, Moritz. 1996. “Die Vielfalt der Habsburgermonarchie und die nationale
Frage”. In: Nation, Ethnizität und Staat in Mitteleuropa, ed. Urs Altermatt,
44-64. Vienna: Böhlau.

Genette, Gérard. 1997. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Trans. Jane E.
Lewin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Lelija Socanac is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of
Zagreb. She is the head of the Centre for Language and Law and the Foreign
Language Department. Her research interests include multilingualism, contact
linguistics, (historical) sociolinguistics, critical discourse analysis
(discourse historical approach) and legal linguistics.

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