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| Post Graduate Diploma in Translation Studies |
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| UNIT 411-1 : A SHORT HISTORY OF TRANSLATION STUDIES |
| 411.1.1: INTRODUCTION |
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| In this lesson we will try to narrate in brief the history of translation across the world. Before we do so, we will clarify to ourselves what is meant by 'history' and what is meant by 'translation'. After specifying our concepts of 'history' and 'translation', we will begin our historical account from the ancient times and continue upto the present century. As we cannot conduct original research into the history of translation for the purpose of one lesson such as this, we will rely upon the historical information given in books on translation. We will mention, within brackets, the second name of the Author/Authoress, the year of first publication of the book/article and page number in which the relevant quotation/information that we refer to is found. The full details of the book / article will be given at the end of the unit under the heading "References". |
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| 411.1.2 : CONCEPT OF 'HISTORY' |
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| The Random House Dictionary of English Language [RHDEL] defines the word 'history' as "a continuous, systematic narrative of past events as relating to a particular people, country, period, person, etc., usually written in chronological order". Originally, the word 'history' comes from a Greek word meaning 'to weave'. What historians do is to weave a pattern by selecting the significant threads of past events. However, all historians do not weave history in the same manner. They differ in their methodological perspectives. Broadly speaking, there have been two fundamentally different perspectives on 'history': Idealist and Materialist. Idealist historians assume that all past events were determined or are explainable in terms of "Ideas", the "Will" and the "Consciousness" of human beings whereas Materialist historians assume that all past events were determined or are explainable in terms of material life conditions, namely economy (the understructure) and politics, literature, law, art, philosophy and such other ideological forms (the superstructure). |
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| The materialist conception of history, which we consider as scientific and, is therefore, adopted in this lesson, has two methodological approaches: the dialectical and the historical approaches. The dialectical method examines all events, phenomena, etc. not in isolation as dead facts but in their inseparable connection and interaction with each other. The historical method treats all events, phenomena, etc., not as eternal but transitory in their nature and development. The materialist conception of history may therefore also be called "Dialectical and Historical materialism". |
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| We will try to narrate the history of Translation Studies from the perspective of Dialectical and Historical Materialism in the following sections of our lesson. But, in the meantime, let us briefly illustrate how Dialectical and Historical Materialism analyses will treat events. Take, for example, the establishment of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. The British colonial rulers established SOAS in 1917 with the declared aim that such a center would enable the British civil and military administrators to learn the languages, literatures and cultures of their 'Oriental' and African colonies (Newmeyer 1986: 57). This is merely the appearance of the event. The reality is much deeper. The British economy was essentially Capitalist and more especially Imperialist in the sense that it needed 'markets' for its international trade. This economic interest of the British ruling classes promoted the British colonial administrators to consolidate the existing colonial power and extend it further if possible. One of the means to realize this social class objective was to establish centers for the study of colonial languages, literatures and cultures. Such centres enable colonial state functionaries of the British ruling classes to understand and control the oppressed classes of their colonies. However, the oppressed classes too, through their experience, understand and wage struggles against the colonial ruling classes and try to get rid of them. This is what the history has been in the South Asian and a number of other contexts. |
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| Thus, as Karl Marx and Frederich Engels, proponents of scientific Communism, observed in the famous "Manifesto of the Communist Party" (1847-8), "the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle". Let us recall their observations on the historical social classes and their struggles: "Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild master and journey-man, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstruction of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes". In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we had patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs, and we find, in almost all of these classes, subordinate gradations. |
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| The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of the feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. |
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| Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat." (As cited in Bapuji, ed. 1993: 23-4). Marx and Engles further demonstrated that "all historical struggles, whether they proceed in the political, religious, philosophical or some other ideological domain, are in fact only the more or less clear expressions of struggles of social classes." (Engels as cited in Bapuji ed. 1993: 25). Thus, for example, the so-called Reformation Movement of the sixteenth century, which challenged the authority of the (Catholic-) church, was an expression of the struggles of the then existing social classes/groups in Germany. The (Catholic-) clergy, Saxony - kings and Peasantry constituted three main social classes during the movement. Although it appeared as a religious movement, it was in fact a struggle to occupy the position of the ruling class. The Saxony-kings, led by their ideologist Martin Luther, opposed the dominance of the Catholic Clergy while the Peasantry led by Thomas Munzer struggled against their exploitation and oppression by both the church and the kings. Thus, the Reformation was only an outward, religious expression of a deeper economic and political struggle between those classes in the European context. |
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| The two examples under discussion - i.e., the establishment of the SOAS and the launching of the Reformation Movement-- are given here only as instances of events about which one has to write a history. We have to view the activity of translation as a set of events from a similar historical perspective. |
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