aliali
29/11/2006, 08:58 PM
أخوتي الكرام.... تواصلا مع ما دأبت غليه من مناقشة لموضوع أمانة المترجم وحياديته الممفترضة.. أحببت أن اضع بين أيديكم هذا الإقتباس مساهمة متواضعة في مناقشة ذت الموضوع على أن اعود لمواصلة هذا النقاش في جلقات قادمة بغذن الله... مع خالص تقديري ومحبتي
TRANSLATION RULES ARE ETHICAL DECISIONS
Ethics is a professional concern
Ethical questions concern translation on two levels. On the one hand, tired repetitions of traduttore traditore presuppose some kind of ideal loyalty to a source text, author or sender, often pitted against similar loyalty to a receiving language, culture or receiver. On the other, codes of ethics are written for the control of translation as a profession, regulating the translator's relations with other translators, with clients and with questions like official secrets. These are two very different levels. In the first case, the ideal translator remains an invisible linguistic figure, corresponding to no I-here-now. In terms of the profession, however, the ideal translator is a juridical and fiscal entity who, according to most contemporary ethical codes, should have paratextual and extra-textual presence as the partly responsible source of translated texts. The implicit anonymity of the first level would seem to be overridden by a call to explicit professional presence on the second.
Historically, this difference in levels can be projected as a long process going from politically enslaved anonymity to independently professional practice, a process that has been accompanied by the progressive development and justification of translational ethics. That is, to the extent that translators have slowly transformed their anonymity into a professional identity, they have been able partly to develop a professional ethics.
But can it simply be assumed that all individual translators have become equally professional? Have they really gained sufficient authority to develop their own ethics? And if so, where did this authority come from, and in whose interests should it be used?
Approaches to translational ethics mostly fail to address such questions because they are almost exclusively focused on the practice of the abstract individual translator. Experts thus set about writing rules on the model of "when in situation A, take action B", hoping that inexpert individuals will conform to an ethically unquestioned and ostensibly unquestionable norm. But if no isolated individual has ever gained enough authority to formulate and apply this kind of rule - truly isolated individuals tend to be called traitors - , how can a realistic code of behaviour possibly be formulated in such terms? The starting point for translational ethics must be the professional group, not the lone hand.
This means that, since the historical development of the profession concerns a collectivity - translators as a social group - , it is misleading to formulate translation rules as simple precepts for individuals who might be morally right or corrigibly wrong. The essential problem of translational ethics is not how to translate in any given situation, but who may decide how to translate.
Partial answers to this question can be gleaned from the long march from slavery to professionalism. Translators became professional, but they did not do so spontaneously or individually. They passed through several intermediary stages, recountable in terms of political models and arabesque arguments concerning inspiration, individualism, divided loyalty and the apparently neutral use of natural languages.
TRANSLATION RULES ARE ETHICAL DECISIONS
Ethics is a professional concern
Ethical questions concern translation on two levels. On the one hand, tired repetitions of traduttore traditore presuppose some kind of ideal loyalty to a source text, author or sender, often pitted against similar loyalty to a receiving language, culture or receiver. On the other, codes of ethics are written for the control of translation as a profession, regulating the translator's relations with other translators, with clients and with questions like official secrets. These are two very different levels. In the first case, the ideal translator remains an invisible linguistic figure, corresponding to no I-here-now. In terms of the profession, however, the ideal translator is a juridical and fiscal entity who, according to most contemporary ethical codes, should have paratextual and extra-textual presence as the partly responsible source of translated texts. The implicit anonymity of the first level would seem to be overridden by a call to explicit professional presence on the second.
Historically, this difference in levels can be projected as a long process going from politically enslaved anonymity to independently professional practice, a process that has been accompanied by the progressive development and justification of translational ethics. That is, to the extent that translators have slowly transformed their anonymity into a professional identity, they have been able partly to develop a professional ethics.
But can it simply be assumed that all individual translators have become equally professional? Have they really gained sufficient authority to develop their own ethics? And if so, where did this authority come from, and in whose interests should it be used?
Approaches to translational ethics mostly fail to address such questions because they are almost exclusively focused on the practice of the abstract individual translator. Experts thus set about writing rules on the model of "when in situation A, take action B", hoping that inexpert individuals will conform to an ethically unquestioned and ostensibly unquestionable norm. But if no isolated individual has ever gained enough authority to formulate and apply this kind of rule - truly isolated individuals tend to be called traitors - , how can a realistic code of behaviour possibly be formulated in such terms? The starting point for translational ethics must be the professional group, not the lone hand.
This means that, since the historical development of the profession concerns a collectivity - translators as a social group - , it is misleading to formulate translation rules as simple precepts for individuals who might be morally right or corrigibly wrong. The essential problem of translational ethics is not how to translate in any given situation, but who may decide how to translate.
Partial answers to this question can be gleaned from the long march from slavery to professionalism. Translators became professional, but they did not do so spontaneously or individually. They passed through several intermediary stages, recountable in terms of political models and arabesque arguments concerning inspiration, individualism, divided loyalty and the apparently neutral use of natural languages.